I also became the repair tech for any broken synths and guitar amps on the Island, which in turn led to me acquiring a rather large collection of synths, both vintage and modern day. I began gigging regularly in a couple of local bands too, playing keyboards and guitar in classic rock and prog genres - there really weren’t any venues or appetite for electronic music performance there at that time, but now things have changed, which is great!
What were your first mods, circuit bends, or designs?
Initially I would just build synth DIY projects, but as my knowledge and experience grew I bought a few electronics textbooks and got a grounding in the theory and applied mathematics needed for design. It was quite liberating to be able to look at a schematic and have a full understanding of how and why it worked. I was lucky enough to be one of the first people in the UK to buy a Polivoks synthesiser from Russia after the wall came down, I bought is as a fully working unit, but when it arrived it was not functioning correctly and I had to spend some time reverse engineering the circuitry and then repairing it. In the process, I discovered that the VCF used what appeared to be a Soviet copy of the UA776 programable op amp, in a design that relied on reduction of gain bandwidth rather than the usual resistor capacitor filter topology to control filter cutoff. I found this quite fascinating so a few years later I built the very first Polivoks VCF clone. I passed my work to Mark Bareille at Papareil Synth Works and he tidied up the design and offered pcb’s for the project.
Kind of an obvious question but why did you choose to model the MiniMoog with the first AJH Eurorack modules?
My modular adventure started with a 5U format system, and I built modules from Synthesis Technology, OakleySound, Ken Stone, Blacet and a few of my own utility modules. But as my modular system grew I was drawn more towards the more compactness of the Eurorack format, so alongside the 5U cabinets I built up a Eurorack system with modules from Doepfer and Analogue Systems along with my own collection of homebrewed modules.
At the time I had quite a few vintage synths, including an early Minimoog Model D and I was frustrated that I couldn’t get the meaty lead and bass sounds from Eurorack that were available from these synths, and my Model D in particular. So I decided to build myself a modular Model D in Eurorack format as a synth voice. A few friends heard it, loved it and asked if I could build them one too; thus began the process of re-engineering it as the MiniMod system. I put up a post on muffwiggler and AJH Synth as a company started from there…
For those that haven't looked into it, is there any difference or special additions to the MiniMod voice?
The design goal was to get as close to the sound of the Model D as possible and at the same time take full advantage of the open architecture and expandable nature of the Eurorack modular format. So lots of goodies were added and nothing taken away, I broke it down into five separate modules which are patchable and allow voltage control over all of the major functions. I added many extra features, such as oscillator sync, variable PWM with voltage control, exponential and linear modulation on the VCO’s, voltage controlled resonance and gain boost on the VCF, manual trigger and status leds on the envelopes,