It doesn't look like much in the picture, but this is the Aurora AR1, a new all-analog 3 oscillator monophonic synth being built in Bedford by Adrian from Synth Restore for just £500. It's fantastically old-school, with no MIDI, a 12db filter that should sound more Oberheimy/ARPy than Moogish, and a real hardwood case. Send him £150 deposit, and he'll build you one in two weeks. I've been looking around for alternative analog synths with keyboards: You could get an old Jen SX1000 for around £150, but it only has one oscillator. A Sequential Circuits Pro-One is very cool, and has an arpeggiator and sequencer built in, but the sounds are more basic, they're fairly unreliable, and a clean, restored one can cost £600+. A Roland SH-101 has a definite retro charm and costs about £250, but again, has only one oscillator. The Soviet PolyVox is also very cool, and has two oscillators, but is still much more basic than the Aurora, for around £250 (plus a lot of postage). You might find a Moog Prodigy for £450, which is obviously an impressive thing to have in the house, but to get close to the Aurora's power, you'll need £1,000+ for a MiniMoog
Unrelated to your current post, but I thought you might be interested in the Moroder post on my mp3 blog (www.diddywah.blogspot.com), since I pinched one of your images. I love your site, and although I'm not a musician (I did once have a housemate with a Juno 6(?) which was fun to muck around on), I have an uncontrolable urge to push buttons when I see them. You obviously enjoy a bit of button pushing and knob twiddling too, and I mean that in the nicest possible way.
ReplyDeleteThe Aurora doesn't look too good to me.
ReplyDeleteHaving only one envelope generator is pretty lame, and 12db per octave filters always sound wimpy. Plus the styling is such a Pro 1 rip-off. I wish they'd spent their time making a proper Pro 1 clone, or even better an EDP Wasp clone. I'd pay big bucks for a brand new Wasp, specially a well made one.
I think it looks rather lovely. Agree that it could probably do with another envelope generator - unless you can control the VCA with gate and use the env for the filter (like on an SH09).
ReplyDeleteI'm not so sure that 12db filters always sound wimpy - my MS20 always sounded strong.
I have played a wasp! I hope that if someone made a clone, they'd use real keys this time around. :)
ReplyDeleteMaybe arturia or the guys that made the fhromage/oddity emulator will come up with a softsynth version, that and a syrinx. As for personal taste, I like the arp/mellotron/oscar emulators better than the real thing. No more noise, no more detuning! Certainly, we don't have the processing power to make vst synths run at sampling rates that are 100% convincing, but that's what what you use good engineering skills for. Doubling up the track with a white noise effected/or bitcrushed element does the trick. Then again, I like my synths thin (just not spikey/ratty - ie the nord).
rob
You'll find a free software version of the Wasp here: http://www.macmusic.org/softs/version.php/lang/EN/id/3043/
ReplyDeleteEnjoy!