News - Have no money but want to create your own synth? Kickstarter!

Have no money but want to create your own synth? Kickstarter!

That’s what many aspiring designers and engineers exclaimed before you even asked. Because they know exactly how it should work and how to construct it without spending extra money. Plankton Elektronics developers are the ones of those smart people. They started up a project raising funds for their semi-modular Ants! synth which embraces the number of basic modules assembled in one case. We were ensured that we would get an affordable and self-sufficient synthesizer. And you know what? Seems like we will because these guys are good. Listen to the demos and read below why we dare to think so.

So why Plankton Elektronics Ants! will be a success?

Powerful functionality and fully analog path
You can connect the different parts and functions with standard 3.5mm pacth cords creating any possible and impossible (why not?) sound
Just a fraction of the price of a similar eurorack modular synth
Full Eurorack compatibility
Portability; it can be effectively used as a desktop synth

Plankton Elektronics Ants! parameters:

4 oscillators (2 of them are switchable to LFO) which combine sinusoidal, triangle, saw, square and pulse with PWM. You’ll be able to play chords, generate detuned basses, octave-shifted leads, drums, and FM sounds
2 LFOs with triangle, square and pulse outputs
VCF (12dB low-pass / 6db high-pass resonant) with self-oscillation and distortion effect at high input volume
2 A/R envelopes (manually or CV controlled)
3-channel mixer (to mix oscillators, envelopes, noise or any other signals)
2 VCAs
White noise generator
Sample&Hold
AND gate (to combine oscillators in order to create new sounds, combine LFOs to make various patterns and mix CV signals to enrich modulation possibilities
MIDI to CV converter (to transform the digital signal to analog voltages)
49 patch points, 28 potentiometers, 5 switches and 8 leds
Some basic connections are already configured by default so you can just connect your Midi or CV controller and play the device – no patching needed. You can also plug a patch cord to the input breaking an existing (pre-patched) connection

All features mentioned above are available as soon as you pay a sum less than $500. And if the quality proves to be as good as they promise then Pittsburgh Modular Lifeforms and Make Noise 0-COAST will have to make room for Ants! or who knows even give way to it.

Plankton Elektronics engineers claim Ants! is almost done and ready to shine - the final version will be out in January 2017 and in February mass production will start. First on the waiting list will get their units in April.

Now you can listen to the demos and decide whether it’s worth buying a synth which used to be a start up project.