All Posts By

Nicolas

Christmas is here

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For Christmas I treated myself with 45kg worth of electronic parts. 10.500 pots, switches, etc… Happy days. Coming in new product in 2019.

New controller in the making

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I’ve been working on different new products for a while now and finally made real progress on the next controller. This thing will be a beast with more than 100 controls . The enclosure will be an improvement on the actual line-up of controllers.

All controllers in stock

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The 3 controllers are now in stock. My partners did a great job. The PCBs are soldered to perfection and the front panels are really gorgeous.

Orders are shipping usually within a week.

New DIY Eurorack projects available

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I added the product pages for 2 new cool DIY projects. They are digital Eurorack Modules. Clocky is an Arduino-nano based clock divider/multipler. The second module is the STM32DUINO dual trigger to CV, a very powerful little module for modulation purposes with firmwares for dual LFO and ADSR. Both modules have Arduino compatible open-source firmwared that you can hack and change to your linking. It’s all through-hole so easy to build and I am making tutorial videos to explain the hardware and software. Available in the webshop now!

MIDI controllers : manufacturing update

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Hi there,

I got updates from the electronics assembly as well as the front and back panel manufacturer.

The soldering of the PCBs are starting this week and Grawart (http://grawart.pl/) are working on the first samples of front and back panels for the SFC-5. When the samples are approved they will go on with the whole batch. For the SFC-60 and SFC-Mini, I found 3 different companies : one to cut the metal, another powder coating and then a last one to do screen printing. It was cheap but took so much time to pick up stuff and prepare the material for the next step. Also, most powder coating companies are used to do rough and quick jobs, while front panels need a huge amount of patience and care. I have some panels I cannot use from the SFC-60 and Mini because they are not perfect. I am positive that Grawart can deliver perfection based on what I have seen at Superbooth.

Without any major issues, the controllers should be shipping at the beginning of July.

Cheers,
Nicolas

Superbooth 2018 experience

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He guys,

Superbooth was truly amazing. I will be back next year for sure. I had the opportunity to talk to a lot with visitors and got some great feedback. A lot of people requested the possibility to change the CC values of the each control (to control hardware synths with fixed CC numbers), so when I got back from Berlin I worked on it and created a small application where you can configure every CC messages number and even change the general MIDI channel. There will be one for each controller.

But it was also great to meet other companies/makers and talk to plug/software makers. In the evening, the gigs were great and the atmosphere was fantastic with all those crazy synths makers from all over the world.

The Arcade machine was also a big hit, I will probably make a 2 player one next with a bigger screen 🙂

If you live in Europe (or not), consider going next year, it’s worth it!

Nicolas.

New MIDI controllers announced @ Superbooth & available for pre-order

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I am happy to announce my 3 new MIDI controllers. The SFC-Mini & 60 got revised and are now updated as version 2. I am also bringing out the SFC-5, for all the P5-style synth plugins.

The front and back panels are now made of metal cut in The Netherlands. The material is powder coated in Germany and finally screen printed again in The Netherlands. The result is an extremely though and beautiful panel.

Another update is more controls for the SFC-60 and rocker switches for the SFC-Mini.

Come and try them out @ Superbooth O542

Countdown to Superbooth 2018: Arduino Nano clock divider/mutliplier

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Another cool DIY module I will show at superbooth, an Arduino Nano based clock mangler. Its open source firmware allows you to learn programming for synthesizers clock applications  as well as creating your custom firmware for your own application. Think about a clock sequencer, a binary counter, random clocks generator, etc… Oh and it has fancy RGB leds.

Countdown to Superbooth 2018: Powder coating

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Today I picked up from the powder coating company all the front and bottom panels for the MIDI controllers. 100kg of steel and aluminium parts. It was done in Germany in Gronau just across the border. Check out the size of the oven. Tomorrow the front panels get screen printed in another city nearby.