"Friday Rarest synths ....... Jen SYNX-508 - the Italian OBX (In its dreams 😂)
Not got it now but the Synx 508 was Jen's attempt at a polysynth, the SX1000 may not have been up to much sonically but the Synx508 really tried hard . 508 comes from the configuration, it took plug in voice cards which sat vertically like they do in a Jupiter 4 and was available with 5 to 8 voice options. sounded pretty good and a true polysynth too, one with memories ......
I rebuilt this 8 voice one from two scrappers and it featured in Peter Forrest's A-Z of synths .. Sorry about the quality of the pic, I had this in the film camera days
Never seen one since. "
Ah, le Murmux V2...
J'ai eu l'espoir d'en trouver un à sa sortie - j'avais les fonds. Espoir douché en quelques heures... Tout s'est vendu extrêmement vite.
Ce qui me réconforte est que ces 50 exemplaires ont été acquis par des passionnés. Depuis 10 ans qu'il est sorti, les annonces de revente se comptent à peine sur les doigts d'une main.
Neveud
9268
Je poste, donc je suis
Membre depuis 6 ans
30 Mai 2026 à 09:10
#2463
Pareil pour le Abyss, largement introuvable… me suis rabattu sur un Korg minilogue
vilak
4413
Squatteur·euse d’AF
Membre depuis 9 ans
31 Mai 2026 à 14:07
#2464
Charles Rehill sur Facebook :
"I’ll play along for rare synth day:
I think this Baldwin Syntha-sound is the rarest in my collection. It was formerly in a production company’s inventory for the better part of forty five years and the owner had no idea if it ever worked. For fun, I had someone restore it for me a number of years ago (I managed to track down the schematics through a former Baldwin employee.)
It’s kind of fun in the kitschy mini-Korg 700 way, just way less musical and interesting. It does look cool though, and has giant wooden bars as envelope trigger and a tremolo on/off
It’s like a rare Nintendo game- collectible and interesting because it was a commercial flop, not because it’s a great instrument."
Attention, click droit + ouvrir l'image, elle est très grosse!
Post de Josha R. Kolenc sur Facebook (images après le texte).
The rarest synth that I own - Ciat-Lonbarde Fancy Ambrazier - three strange synth voices and an external input combined with three lo-fi, 8-bit looping delays. Only 3 units were ever made, and I’ve been unable to find out what happened to the other two.
It also has to be the strangest thing that I own. It is constructed out of wood and covered in animal skin. It is signed by Peter Blasser on the inside. It has a plastic transparent overlay that has all of the control labels. I removed it once I had all of the controls memorized to preserve the condition. It came with a photocopied 11x17 hand drawn manual with abstract descriptions of the devices functionality accompanied by abstract drawings.
This synth is the earliest ancestor of the better known Cocoquantus.
It has an envelope generator that can be used to modulate the volume of the synth and input sections.
There are 3 synth sections: One wide range voice with fm capabilities named vandm. It has four parameters: affect (volume), Freq, mfreq and crazy.
Another wide range voice named cats. It has four parameters. Affect (volume), freq, filter and reso. It also has a noise section called.. noise. It has three parameters. Affect (volume), freq and crazy.
There is an input section called Extern that allows you to insert a signal via xlr or 1/4 inch. There are three parameters. One for overall level, one for xlr and one for 1/4 inch.
There is a silence section that allows you to insert silence or fully erase the buffers (more on this momentarily.
Each of the above sections has a punch and env button. They are momentary buttons. The env button triggers the amplitude envelope for that section and the trigger button allows the audio from that section to pass through while the bottom is held. Tapping the envelope button will trigger a single cycle of the envelope as determined by the UP and Down knobs (rise and fall). Holding the env buttons will loop the envelope until the button is released, after which, it will complete its current cycle. Interestingly, each synth and the ext section have their own dedicated envelope. While they share the same rise and fall controls, they can be triggered independently of one another regardless of the state of the envelope for the other sections. For example, you can trigger the envelope for one section and trigger the envelope in other sections during or after the cycle. This is a lot of fun with longer envelopes.
The top three sections are crude digital looping delays. Each section has three controls: Speed, feedback and level. The speed control acts almost the way a tape speed control. Turning it up results in longer delays and simultaneous decreases the fidelity. For sounds that are already recorded into the buffer, it lowers the pitch as well. The rate of the first buffer is the also lowers the rate of the other two buffers. Lowering the speed of the other buffers slows it down even further. Interesting, it lowers it by musical interval subdivisions of the first buffer. Almost as if the clock from the buffer is run through a subharmonic generator. Each buffer has four buttons: 1/64, 1/32, 1/16 and 1/8. Each of these buttons are momentary and temporarily freezes a fraction of the audio buffer associated with the subdivisions of the button. The infinite looping is in effect even when the Feedback control is all the way down. Turning up the feedback control feeds the buffers signal back into itself. The effect of this can be anything from accentuating and intensifying, to devolving the sound in the buffer to a mutated wall of noise. This allows for three independent, yet interrelated layers for looping in a Frippertronics sort of way, but with the ability to punch silence into the buffers.
There is another button that chooses which buffer the synth, noise, input and silence sections are writing to.
Finally, each buffer has an individual 1/4 inch output, there is a main output and level knob where all three buffers are present and a separate output and level knob for headphones.
It is such a strange, noisy and interesting synth. It can be used for all kinds of abstract purposes. It is an excellent device for musique concrète. I can also easily imagine it being used in a NIN song.
I love to layer sounds in the buffers, send the direct outputs to filters and effects.
I wonder where the other two units made their way to?
Scraped from the old rainbow random website:
“ambient fire machine: "the fancy ambrazier"
Combines 8bit digitalia, analog chaos, and leather: to work with voice, analog synthesizers, and sampling. Each ambrazier contains three 8bit digital sound buffers: "buffs". You can tune the main buff to lengths from 20 seconds to one second. The other two "debuffs" follow the main buff, but using a unique analog phase lock technique, can also multiply its period in steps- 1,2,3,4 up to 20. The buffs are tuned to infinitely ramble, but you can make them amplify and distort. You can also stop each buff and make it repeat small segments, to do microscopic sound surgery. Into each buff, you can dynamically insert the following:
• a chaotic vibrator from a sine wave to chaotic warbling (vandm)
• a filtered oscillator from low resonant bell tones to high pitched pussycats
• digital noise from low garbling to high swish
• line in, to sample any other input
• builtin XLR balanced microphone input
• a source of silence
Each ambrazier is covered in high quality leather. Its buttons are simple nipples poking up through the warm skin surface.
Testimonials:
Really this is the best electronic inst of any kind I've played. I have some limited experience with analog synths but they were sort of counter-intuitive to me, not as direct or versitile of results. It really is an "infinite rambler." I respect the design and innovation very much... Its just so wild and infinite and a performance to me requires a loving kind of CONTROL. Don't worry its in good hands.
-Kevin
I fully intend to utilize the instrument to its fullest deconstruction in my plan to conquer by terrorizing eyes and ears with sublime noise...
Oui, je ne sais pas si ce sont les démos qui sont peu inspirées mais le son fait comme du vilain pouet-pouet des années 70
Putain Walter mais qu'est-ce que le Vietnam vient foutre là-dedans ?
Neveud
9268
Je poste, donc je suis
Membre depuis 6 ans
08 Juin 2026 à 08:51
#2471
Pour ma part elles sont très bonnes ces démos !
vilak
4413
Squatteur·euse d’AF
Membre depuis 9 ans
09 Juin 2026 à 19:12
#2472
Chris Meyer sur Facebook :
It's not a full-blown synth, but a modular expander.
In this case, it's the Dennis 201 Control Voltage Processor (CVP for short), made by Dennis Electronics in Honolulu in the late 1970s. Denny Genovese made five of them. He sold one, kept one, and - through an introduction made by Don Slepian - Denny shipped the remaining three to me: one in the original koa wood case (which I loaned to someone at E-mu Systems, and never saw again), and two without cases. My dad made a Tolex case for them ages ago, and then a few years ago Jason Fink of MandoFink Cases made this ambrosia maple case for me.
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