Limor Fried is my new hero. She's the MIT student who built a personal mobile phone jammer as part of her masters thesis, and MintyMp3, an MP3 player in an Altoids box. She's looking for a job, but meanwhile is about to start production of the x0xb0x, a $300 kit to build a full-on reproduction of the TB303: "We have two--count 'em, two--analog electrical engineers with too much time on their hands working on this project. An original TB-303 was diassembled and reverse-engineered to verify the schematic. The original transistors were analysed using big expensive curve-tracers to determine their characteristics. We measured every waveform and counted every cycle to give you the best sound...its just like the original because it IS the original." Except they've added MIDI, USB interface and a slightly simpler programming system. $300 sounds good, but you have to build the thing yourself, and it's a pretty intimidating bag of components. (Thanks Jodi)
Posted by Tom Whitwell. 
: 4:28 pm