If you’ve always wanted a classic Buchla synth, but were put off by the classic Buchla synth prices, now you can build your own.
Electric Music Store is now selling Buchla & M.E.M.S. barebones kits (PCB and panel sets), based on ’70s era Buchla 200 systems. These are official Buchla products, made in collaboration with The M.E.M.S. Project.
They currently have 8 modules with panels available, with plans for 9 more. PCBs ship with the panels as a set, and various other parts are available separately.
Details on the Buchla & M.E.M.S. barebones kits are available at the Electric Music Store site.
Note: These are probably best suited to advanced synth DIYers. Electric Music Store recommends that you research the PCBs and build docs before purchasing.
What a rip-off. They are charging up to $300 for just a PCB and panel? For that price, you could buy an entire module from Tip Top Audio!
You might want to learn some basic economics, especially economies of scale and how price relates to volume.
This is obviously a niche, low volume product and the price reflects that. Reducing the price to sell more isn’t an option for a product like this.
That might apply where components or built modules are concerned, but for a panel and pcb, even in batches as low as 5, this is pretty steep. When you look at just the panels (which look very nice) the prices seem in line with what euro panels are being sold for, but the PCBs are where they get you. I guess these prices take into account all the archeological research and development that MEMS has done, hunting down these rare designs from 50 years ago and carefully reverse-engineering them. I don’t know, I think this is awesome, and the prices aren’t really a shock. It is not unheard of to pay upwards of $400 for eurorack DIY kits; why would this be any different?
MEMs has appeared on this site plenty of times – notably for Braids
His Buchla styled Mutable Instruments Braids clone sells for $750 which is (more than?) twice what an original Braids would have cost you. And almost 4 or 5 times what any regular euro Braids clone would cost
Make of that what you will
There are many online services who will make PCB’s and panels for far less. You upload a gerber file for the PCB and the design for the panel. (Not to the same service of course). The more you order – the lower price you get.
Dude, my guy, you have clearly never designed your own circuit boards to a professional level, and then written documentation detailed enough for a 3rd party to make the thing without prior knowledge of your schematic.
This is Buchla-land, where *everything* is more expensive.
$300 just got me a one-off run off 5 fabricated and fully populated/assembled PCBs with surface mount parts. Each PCB is a clone of an MS20 voice with extra VCAs for voltage control of every parameter to use in a poly synth.
I would say that’s fairly niche.
No. It sounds very interesting!! Good luck with your project.