Here's the Monowave, a custom-designed, hand-built analog monosynth by Paul Maddox who is 'Modulus Electronics'.... There's very few custom built analog synths on the market... Some are only available in kit-form, and other can be purchased built-to-order... Paul hand builds the MONOWAVE to order.
Here's some information about Monowave:
Monowave is a Monophonic hybrid didgital/Analogue synth. Originally intended to create powerfull bass lines, it soon become apparant it could handle solos with equal style and ease.
It has two digital oscillators, each with 256 waveforms, 127 of these are taken from the PPG Wave synthesizer. it also has two sub oscillators (one for each oscillator). A four channel mixer to allow mixing of the two oscillators and two sub oscillators, a Moog 24dB ladder filter for unsurpased analogue filtering, discrete analogue VCAs and two analogue ADSRs.
Also an LFO is available and can be routed to oscillator 1,2 or the VCF. One unique feature of the MOnowave is that which allows you to 'deres' the oscillators, what this does is reduce the sample rate of the oscillators, giving a harsher more aggresive sound not found on most modern digital synths.
For a complete block diagram see here: http://www.modulus.synth.net/monowave/mw_block_diag.jpg
Waveforms can be changed via MIDI CC, allowing for some interesting effects to be created , here is an audio demo of this effect: http://www.modulus.synth.net/monowave/wavechange1.mp3
For a more complete set of sound samples visit this page: http://www.modulus.synth.net/monowave/demos.htm
I was interested in how someone actualy sets up a synth company... I asked Paul if he could tell me how it all came to gether which you might find interesting... Here's his reply...
Paul Maddox
I have always been a keen synth enthusiast and a big fan of electronics so the marriage of the two seemed inevitable, and in early 1998 I began building myself a modular (http://www.modulus.synth.net/modular/) , in 1999 I created a VCO that had the 127 waveforms taken from the PPG Wave ROMs that are used to create the 30 wavetables, I then built a moog ladder filter, and connected the two together, the sound was just amazing! almost like a monophonic PPG wave!
So I set about building a monophonic rack mounted version of the modules needed, 2 PPG oscillators, moog ladder, VCA and ADSRs. The Monowave came into being in mid 2000, after my many years of obsessing about the PPG Wave, and wanting to create my own version of it.. The first prototype sounded every bit as good as I had hoped, and when I had a chance to show it to a range of PPG users (old and new) there was quite a bit of interest. Enough to make me feel I should have a go at producing a few. so I set about the task of conerting my prototype into a production model. I setup a company 'Modulus Electronics' (www.modulus.synth.net) so that people would be able to send money to a company rather than just me. The front panel was given a new layout and new look and the OS underwent some major and quite radical changes, most notibly the addition of an LFO (until V4 it had no LFO).
I decided to a small run of 25 for several reasons; firstly Money, I dont have much so making a lot would've been a huge gamble with money I simply didnt have. Secondly, I have never run a company before, so if it got too much for me I wouldn't have 100's of them sitting around. Finally, if the project was a success and I managed to sell all 25 I would have enough money to invest in future products.
With some help from my family and 5 beta testers, I managed to get the money needed to build 5 Beta units, 30 cases, and 30 front panels. After 4 months of intense beta testing and debugging, the OS went through no less than 40 revisions before reaching its final stage. we ellimianted no less than 36 bugs with the OS and now, Im happy to say, none remain.. My reason for doing this rather than releasing it without fully testing was that I was sick of people buying synths and then not being able to use them properly or to their full ability, I wanted to release a *finished* product. You plug it in, switch it on, and it works, no messing around with OS updates..
In february of 2002, the Beta monowaves made an appearance at the PPG 2002 convention (http://www.ppg.synth.net/events/ppg2002.htm) and went down a storm.
when I sold 18 production units, I finally broke even, I paid back my family and now the Monowaves are self-funding, what I mean is that I dont have to worry about paying back the bank, or borrowing money each time I receive and order, the money from each sale goes into buying the parts to build the one I sell.. This does lead to a slight delay of around 14 days before I can ship a unit, but it does mean that each unit is built/tested and setup by its designer, something that seldom happens these days.
Once all 25 are sold, I will have enough funds to develop a polyphonic version, with more features and in a larger quantity. So you have the story of the Monowave and Modulus electronics.
Paul Maddox
(Paul.Maddox@Synth.net)
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