Anyone interested in analog synth DIY may want to check out MFOS website and beginner projects and LO-FI Noise boxes. They are good for starting out as a beginner. Check out Ray Wilson’s MFOS website here:
I picked up a copy of Ray Wilson’s Make: Analog Synthesizers book. The one thing about most synth DIY books is that they are mostly old, published in the 70s. This book is nice since it is more recent (2013) and is a most welcome addition to anyone’s DIY electronics bookshelf. Overall it contains very good practical advice about starting out with electronics, soldering, construction, and workbench setup. I also really enjoyed the troubleshooting portion in chapter 2, where you can pickup a few useful tips and tricks for troubleshooting and fixing your circuits.
The most time consuming process I’ve found when building a project is sourcing all of the parts. Mouser, digikey, Jameco are all wonderful websites but it takes hours to search for your components, narrow down based on requirements, and add to cart. I created a Mouser ‘project’ with all of the MFOS Noise Toaster components. You can view the Noise Toaster Synth Part List here:
MFOS Noise Toaster BOM Mouser Project
This includes everything but the battery, knob caps, case enclosure. You may want to swap out a different speaker based on your preferences as well. But I hope this may come in handy to save time for someone who is interested in building the MFOS Noise Toaster. Drop me a line if you spot any errors or omissions.
I’m going to build my first Noise Toaster with one of Ray’s PCBs. If that works out I’m going to try and etch a second pcb from scratch just to see how it goes. I’ll post back with the results.
Out of interest some other great Synthesizer DIY books you may want to check out below.
The Synth DIY Wiki books page has a great list: