Building a Synthesizer, 1

The mki x es.EDU DIY System

Posted on February 21, 2023

This post will be a brief oveview of the mki x es.EDU DIY System. I’ll get to actual construction in the next post.

Including the power supply, there are 11 modules in the full system, but two of them are the same.

I personally think that the single greatest thing you get with the kits is something which doesn’t ship in the box: The instructions. They are generally excellent, and most of them were written by Mortiz Klein, who did most of the circuit design. If you’re seriously considering building these (or any other synth kits), I’d suggest sitting down with one of the manuals – here is the VCO manual, for example – as they will not only teach you about electronics and synthesizers but also about how to teach such concepts.

The full system includes:

Although the instructions are very good, as I work through each kit I am finding that I often want additional information, such as more explanation of what certain components do or additional schematic diagrams. I will share that information in the post for each kit I build.

That’s the whole system!1 I will discuss each module in more detail when I write about building them in future posts. The next post in this series discusses building the power supply.

Resources

The mki x es.EDU DIY System -- the entire, complete system in its enclosure


  1. Since I wrote this article Erica Synths has introduced some additional kits in the mki x es.EDU series, which are not included in the “System” package.↩︎

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