In the May 1977 issue of Elektor there appeared the first of a series of articles devoted to the Formant, a sophisticated music synthesiser whose performance was on a par with that of many commercial models but which was designed for home construction and could be built for a fraction of their cost.
The magazine still exists and Erica Synth has just revived the kits although not quite affordable at €3000.00. (YMMV but that is a bit too rich for my blood :>)
I have an original hard copy of the book that I bought as a teenager, with aspirations of building this. I never had the funds to buy the components so only got as far as building a wooden case for the keyboard. The book came with a cassette tape with demonstration of Formant synth sounds. I listened to that a lot with awe at how you could create the sound of an oboe or violin with different oscillator waveforms, filters, etc. I learned much of my understanding of subtractive synthesis from that book and tape. The book is in my drawer. I am sure the cassette is somewhere in the house still…
I did much the same with the Synthesizer Basics by Dean Friedman (webarchive) as books did not cost the price of a nice car as synths did in our teen aged years
The Formant and by extension Elektor, looked so much more futuristic than the UK offerings.
Even the magazine pages had a decent glaze compared with the quickly fading Everyday Electronics, Practical electronics and ETI. That was roughly my ordering of authority with Elektor believed above all others!
There circuit boards alone look like they meant business and the labeling was superb.
I built the three band filter and was blown away by it in my Practical Electronics Minisonic 2 home counties synth . . .
when I was young… I was too young to have enough money to buy this. IIRC I still have some of these Elektor magazine pages in a “projects.never-started-but-always-wanted-to” file for later(?) use cases.
And the price is fair for a DIY project. But as I said, when I was young… it’s more a project for a smaller group of living nearby modular synth interested people, sharing the costs and the time to build it. But nice re-animation, compliments.
