News

Updates on project progress, and any other developments.

26 July 2026

Build complete! Now to get these all set up, find some good tubes and get the compliance testing done. New demo showing one in action on the Groovetube page.

12 July 2026

It took a while to put the boards in the cases - another fiddly job, with a few more issues to watch out for. Apart from the one going out as a kit, they are all in and been tested under power. Now wiring up the port connections, and setting EQ - we're on the home straight!

3 June 2026

All coils are now wound! 

This job was always going to be a bit fiddly, and tolerances on the 3D printed parts made it more so than expected.
Assembling ten units is a good test of the design, a few adjustments will be needed before making more of these.

18 May 2026

The build continues... last week was spent wiring up and shielding the interlock relays - now ready to be installed - and adjusting trimpoints on the pcbs, to get the tone signal clipping consistent.

10 May 2026 - build update

After a busy week, the mains and valve heater circuits are installed:

The heater wiring has to be dressed carefully to avoid AC hum:

5 May 2026 - build update

Most of the circuits on the boards have now been tested, it took a while to track down a few errors and get those fixed.
Now on to making up leads for the power inlet/switch, and dressing the transformer wiring.

Valve bases have also been mounted onto the first 5 cases.
Next job is to wire in the heater circuits.

25 April 2026 - build update

Circuit boards for the first batch of instruments are now complete and being tested.

It has taken forever to get these done - the first design was an improvement on the original rats' nest, but extensive changes were needed.
Low prototyping funds meant we had to go with a second version, and this one still required a fair bit of rework - a few op-amps had to be reconfigured, like this:

and a couple of VCAs added, replacing noisy optoisolators:

Safe to say, it was a happy event getting that job done!

So it's finally time to build up these synths. Watch this space for updates, things should move faster now.