Jomox SUNSYN

The Jomox Sunsyn was one of the first of the new breed of boutique company all-analog synths which appeared out of the 2nd wave dance music craze in the 1990's. Jomox were famous for their all analog drum machines which did 909 style sounds and then they hit the world with this polysynth

Founded in 1997 & initially making their mark by releasing an all analog TR-909 emulation - the X-Base 09 - boutique German company JoMoX released its much anticipated first analog polysynth offering, the Sunsyn, in the year 2000. The Sunsyn was a real 8 note beast & while it was one of the the new breed of boutique analog synths to gain widespread critical acclaim the Sunsyn was not so much a players synth in the traditional sense, but behaved and sounds more like a modular unit with it's extensive modulation routing handled by a programable internal matrix. The Sunsyn therefore delivers sounds more in the old Moog or Roland modular ballpark.. bass sounds, synth drum type sounds, blips, organ/string hybrid washes and the usual palette of blips, fx sounds, beeps & boops etc, while it's library of oscillator digital waveforms with the ability to self modulate allows the Sunsyn to also stray into Yamaha-DX & PPG bells & chimes & glassy tonal territory.

The now discontinued Sunsyn was true 8 voice analog with two VCO's per voice offering a choice of Sawtooth, Square or Pulse with PWM, but each voice had the addition of two Ramp Controlled Oscillators (RCO's) delivering a selection of waveforms served from a possible palette of 4 or 7 sets of 256 digitally stored waveforms (initially 4 for the Mk1 & 7 for the Mk2 Sunsyn). These 'RCO' waveforms could be freely blended with the analog oscillator waveforms to create new sounds. This gave the Sunsyn 4 oscillators per voice! These digital waveforms were stored in flash memory and were also capable of playing back short samples or to digitally FM modulate themselves or serve as a modulation source along with the VCO's in the analog routing matrix.

The Sunsyn featured a fully configurable 4 pole true analog filter with editable poles allowing it to deliver a wide choice of filter types from a typical Moog 4-pole to an 18db 303 style lowpass to an Oberheim flavoured 2-pole. Additionally, using the HP/LP switching for each pole, it is possible to create the most spacey bandpass and high-pass filter sounds.
Furthermore, you can store all filter-parameters in 2 scenes and MORPH between them.

Two assignable envelopes (one with +/- polarity switching) plus 2 LFO's offering 4 different wave shapes + S&H topped off the usual synth features and these sections as well as the filters & oscillators could variously be programmed as either sources, modifiers and/or destinations in Sunsyn's unique & comprehensive modulation matrix which, as mentioned, makes it effectively a modular synth with internal programmable routing & patching.

The Sunsyn was equipped with stereo master out plus eight assignable individual outs and all 40 of it's pots transmit MIDI controller data - it was a seriously hardcore piece of equipment & built like a tank with its sheet steel fabricated body & wooden end cheeks (also 19" rack mountable).

On paper therefore the Sunsyn was an advanced, fully featured, very exotic & much anticipated synth, which initially on release garnered a lot of attention across the synth market sector, but in truth the Sunsyn never achieved the widespread acclaim & use of something like the Access Virus and was more useful as a multi-output bass, lead and FX-sounds generating device rather than a synth in the traditional playable form, & for all it's superb specification the Sunsyn was eventually discontinued with only around 200 ever being made.

Nowadays they are very rare to find and command insane secondhand prices of around £5000/6000 - £17,000 GBP and are a serious collectors item.