If your reaction to the Little Phatty was to head straight to an online forum and say "why couldn't they just make a cheap, old-school machine with no presets and no MIDI", then the Aurora AR-1 is your boy - an utterly old-school 3osc hand-made synth, built by Adrian from Synth Restore in Bedford. I reported on it a while back, but things went quiet - Adrian had trouble with some time-wasters. Now the AR1 is back on his site, and he's taking orders at £549 + shipping, made to order with a £200 deposit and 4 week turnaround. Back when I first wrote about it, the only competition came from vintage synths on eBay. Now Adrian's up against the Little Phatty (£899 in the UK) and the DSI MEK (£849) - both have far more features, but this has a certain charm. (via Matrix)