ELBY Designs was founded in early 2003 in an attempt to support the market of DIY synthesizers with the help of component kits for a number of popular PCB designs. The name is composed of initials of the name and surname of the brand's creator. Not easy - Laurie Biddulph = L B = El Bee = ELBY.
Despite the fact that the printed circuit boards were freely available, many sources were often required to collect and assemble all the components for the design of the device, and in some cases there was a problem of unrealistic demand, which caused difficulties for many developers.
Gene Stopp's ASM-1 was in the spotlight, but the business blossomed with the appearance of Cat-Girl Synth from Ken Stone and the designs of Ian Fritz.
What they do in ELBY Designs – they offer everything so that customers do not go to another PCBs shop.
The company offers a comprehensive selection of kits that include components of printed circuit boards and panels, hardware devices, as well as finished boards and front panels.
Thanks to cooperation with Ken Stone, ELBY Designs offered customers a family of eurorack Panther modules, making many Cat-Girl Synth developments available in the eurorack 3U format. The line was expanded by the number of developments made by Ian Fritz.
In 2016, a series of Euro Serge modules was introduced, which allowed the owners of Eurorack systems to access a number of high-profile Serge modules.
The logo is represented with an oscilloscope showing a modulated square wave. The picture comes from the early Laurie’s hobby - Ripple Control systems.
ASM is an analog synthesizer module, a combination of basic building blocks required for many analog synthesizers. The original ASM-1 contained a fairly standard set of traditional analog modules, including such elementary and fundamental sections as: 2 voltage-controlled oscillators, 1 analog filter, 2 analog amplifiers, 2 ADSR envelopes, 1 low-frequency oscillator, 1 noise source and 1 CV glide buffer . ASM-2 includes some improvements and adds a few auxiliary/utility modules. ASM-3 assumes the presence of all possible elements to create a full-fledged analog synthesizer.
AVRSynth is based on ATMEL digital synthesizer. AVRSynth is a monophonic virtual analog synthesizer developed by Jarek Ziembicki. The architecture of the synthesis is quite simple - 2 DCOs, 1 DCF and 1 DCA, and also LFO, AR/ASR envelope generator.
Cat Girl Synth - 4U DIY synthesizer kit. It offers a number of printed circuit board designs by Ken Stone for his Cat Girl Synth, which includes several Serge designs. Components include everything needed to assemble the relevant boards; The CGS hardware kit offers all the components required for the relevant panels (Davies 1900 Clone Knobs, 4mm Banana Sockets and 3mm LED's inclusive); PCB offers Ken Stone's original printed circuit boards; front panels. Hardware kits are also available for other formats: MDO, suitable for 5U format, including MOTM, DotCom and Oakley; EURO-CGS - knobs in the style of MOTM.
Euro Serge and Panther (4mm) was made in collaboration with Serge Tcherepnin and Ken Stone, the company produces a Euro Serge family of synthesizer modules from the Serge Modular Music System, combining the flexibility of patching and the availability of hardware features. This is an open-end system, assuming the addition of new modules in the future, but based mainly on the modules of the Serge 1973 catalog. Units are offered in kits and as assembled devices. Front panels and printed circuit boards can be ordered.
MonoWave is a wavetable synthesizer, the work of the British electronics developer Paul Maddox, who wanted to build a synthesizer rooting the concept into the famous PPG technology.
MonoWave mono bass synth is capable of more than it was going to be. MonoWave is a wavetable synthesizer with 256 waves available for each of the two oscillators. Each oscillator has a sub oscillator. The filter is a copy of the Moog filter, there are individual envelope generators for the filter and amplifier, as well as a simple LFO. The panel is extremely classic, represented by knobs for each function and a display. The circuit is completely analog, except for the digital components used in the oscillators. No digital signal processors – it’s a real traditional synthesizer.
The brand also deals with various DIY parts of KitBits, MIDI interfaces, MODE Machines, Oakley modular systems, octave switches, Pixie clone of EDP Wasp, Odysseus clone of ARP Odyssey and other parts.