THE ONLY DIY POLY SYNTH KIT OF THE 80's - POWERTRAN TRANSCENDENT POLYSYNTH
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- čas přidán 25. 06. 2024
- Lets take a look at the Only Poly Synth Kit Of The 1980's. the Powertran Transcendent POLYSYNTH
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massive thanks to sam on this one!
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#analog #synthesizer #vintage
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A fantastic fix, Sam. I'm glad I was able to pass it onto someone who cared enough to make it live again.
Its great to see it working again and plus it's going to be on show in the museum. It was very kind of you to donate the synth too.
Two sam's make it right.
It went to a good home. Thanks for your generosity.
sam = W
Thanks Sam
I bet a lot of those kits were enthusiastically bought, but ended up in the garage.
Love seeing you here!
That was my thinking as well, look at the simple mistake that made this synth useless.
Tell me about it ! I've still got a loft full although my first one the Maplin 4600 ended up down at the town dump along with a Korg M1 when the hard drive blew and I couldn't be bothered to fix it. Early eighties.
1981 DIY polysynth is exactly what the 2020's needed
This sound is so 1982 I can hardly believe it. I can imagine it dubbed, slightly too loud, over a low-budget BBC SF series that I watched after coming home from school.
3:41 "...I plugged it in and found out, it made a really really good smoke machine." .. that one had me burst out in laughter!
Any piece of electronics can be a smoke machine if you (don't) know how to use it!
I met Dr. Peter Zinovieff at Putney Bridge Road and he didn't mind people making copies of their synths, as he joked "so long as you don't make more of them than me." They sent me copies of the circuit diagrams for the EMS products back in the early 70s.
Absolute love that you save bits of history like this! After the amount of times I've heard of synths being found at colleges/unis I'm about to go burst into my local school, grab one, and run away screaming "IT BELONGS IN A MUSEUM!"
Yeah we gotta raid all the cupboards!!!!
If only someone would create a museum for old synths... That would be quite a dandy idea !
@@Nishijin75 and make them playable (even if supervised to not have careless kids break them)
@@TorutheRedFox of course. We don't need an obsolete museum...
Them dusty arp 2600 and cs50 at my uni are at risk of being stolen by me
I used to buy those electronics magazines in late 70s early 80s I could only drool over some pages as I think my paper round earned me about £2 a week. We did make fuzz boxes and eventually phasers, flanfegers, reverbs and numerous copies of any band pedals we could get access to. One thing I do recall is in our town there were several shops selling electronic components and some just had bins full of caps resistors and transistors you could rumage through I can't find any shops now stocking components. Some of the transistors we were using were just general purpose Eg ac128s, NKTs and oc types these were pennies and now seem to be very sought after. I have still never had a synth now I hearing retirement I might get one. Thanks for all you content and do hope to get to the museum someday when in the area.
MAKE IT HAPPEN. Visit the LMNC forum, we have a lot of fun over there with the DIY synth stuff, and its never to late to get started!
Yeah, those magazines made certain electronic deviced less unaffordable. My first magazine project was an Elektor flanger based on a TDA1022 bucket brigade, it was a bit noisy and could'nt bare high input levels, but hey, in those days a very nice flange, vibrato and short delay in one machine.
Inevitably when the Formant came out, I had to jump in, and building one module every month. When my Elektor Formant was complete, I started a 2x8 sequencer with pitch and quantisized duration per step, and it took me quite a while to come close to perfection. The basics of the sequencer were published in the Formant Club magazine, as well as some nifty Formant improvements, including a mod to make the keyboard duophonic!
Every time you play one of these instruments it amazes me how it transports me to another time, like a long forgotten scent that when you encounter it again fires off all kinds of neurons in your brain. Amazing.
Yes, and I wish I knew this stuff existed when I was a kid. Man. This stuff is incredible.
I love the tuning section, a synth with lots of character!
Put it in unison and fake chord memory. Long before the alpha juno.
the lengths you go to, to get old hardware restored / revived, is absolutely admirable!
Man, I bow down to your genius. It's so lovely seeing things not just being rescued but put to good use again. That is someone's project that did not end in vain, even if it took the best part of four decades to get there.
absolutely massive sounding beast. there's a reason every synth used curtis chips in the 80s, they sound great
This thing sounds absolutely glorious!
I second that. While it may not be exactly like an Oberheim, it is pretty amazing. However some sounds like at 13:48, I have heard an Oberheim do. I am thinking Lonely People by Styx here at about 3 minutes into the song. I KNOW that was an Oberheim. So it is pretty close. Also with the separate VCO modules, that kind of harks back to the modular Oberheims and they too had expanders which had the two voices in it. Definitely lots of similarities.
This thing sounds amazing. It’s even more impressive that it’s hand built by instructions from a magazine in 1981. You brought this thing to life, like Frankenstein.⚡️🤖
Nice one Geezzer. If you have ETI's from around 1978 you will find one of my designs, it's a Stylophone synth using a computer sound chip that had oscillators, filters, noise etc.
Great stuff. I've never heard a demo of a Transcendent Polysynth, let alone such a full examination. I always assumed it would sound a bit weedy, like the Transcendent 2000, but didn't realise it had two oscillators per voice, plus all those funky modulation options. Well done for getting it going and sharing it with us. Not something that Behringer will ever clone, I expect...
That brings back memories. I knew a man in secondary school who built one of those but not from the kit , from the published schematics. Then the man designed a computer board to replace the logic board and it had autotune. You are doing a great thing by preserving a part of our cultural heritage. i wish you all the best in your future endeavors.
I found one of these at a carboot in the late 90s. The case was so badly made covered in pink and grey vinyl from memory. I saw Tim Orr written on it and grabbed it. It was completely dead and way beyond me even then. I ended up selling it for a profit and two old guys from down south came down and picked it up. I genuinely hope they managed to get it fixed up and sorted the wooden case!
About ten years ago, I went to chuck some stuff away at the local dump in Bracknell and saw a Transcendent Polysynth amongst the rubble, together with a string synth from the same brand. Unfortunately, I couldn't rescue it in any way, I even asked if I could take it but they wouldn't let me because only those who threw away their items could claim them back.
To this day, I still think about how sad it is that someone must have spent good money and hours of their blood sweat and tears assembling one of these rare beasts back in the day, only to get rid of it in the most unceremonious possible way years later instead of giving it to someone who could fix it and bring it back to its glory 😥
in this world of 'eco', how pathetic is that rule of not being able to stop something going to landfill. its bs.
The same story with a Simmons sds v with complete drumkit .
should of just grabbed them..... been years since i was back there but the dump changed in its layout many times was up the top with the drop off wall
I bought the Transcendent 2000 - the biggest PCB I ever put together. I still have it and it still works. It was one of the first kits to be released and it took weeks to arrive. I had just be made redundant and had my payoff - I bought my first car ( a fifth hand Skoda for 300 quid) , put the deposit down on our first house (450 quid) and spent 200 quid on the T2000. I really wanted one of these polysynths but no way could I get the money together at that time - I had a mortgage to pay. Thanks for digging this machine up and spending the time to get it working - you have some really cool gear in your possession. Keep it going!!
Best video yet. Keep up the good work. My mate Keith had a 2000 which was built by his physics teacher. He lent it me for a weekend along with a 4 channel cassette Tascam. I got the 2000 to make some bleeping noises but they where very thin. I kept adding another track and bouncing down. In the end I ran out of weekend and the whole thing was a mess. I had no idea what I was doing but kind of enjoyed it lol!
Oh dear, I'm really late to this party, just came across the video. It certainly brought back some memories for me as back in the day I built a 2 osc mono synth from one of the Polysynth voice boards. It got hacked around a bit and I had to design another board with LFOs, portmento, keyboard controller and power supply, slapped it a metal case which I fabricated in work, with a three octave keyboard. It sounded great and I used it for 10 years of amateur home recording before it disappeard into the depths of the shed. I recently dug it out (very grubby and rusty) and dismantled it for the bin but kept the voice board - who knows, I might re-visit it at some point. But good work, it's nice to see a rare piece of history back to life.
I have one of these that I ordered as a kit from Andover, England in 1982 and built it in Sweden when I was 17 years old. I still have it and it still works!
A beautiful machine, and a stunning performance at the end.
Fascinating to finally hear this thing after all these years.
Wow, great video! I had never realised that the Transcendent Poly was even a "real" analog poly (always assumed it was divide down), let alone it having a voice assigner built entirely out of logic, like the famous Rossum design in the Oberheim FVS. In fact, it would be very interesting to see how similar the Tim Orr and Rossum designs are. Writing voice assigner code in software can be tricky enough - doing it with a bunch of 80's TTL is something that's impressive as hell! Somebody really should track Tim Orr down and do an interview with him someday.
I built the monophonic version of this one. The pitch used to drift all over the place with temperature but it had great sound!
how can you find people willing to throw out synthesizers??? i wish i could meet people like that 😅
Oh my god, I did a music course at Latrobe university in Melbourne Australia, they had all kinds of wonderful stuff, like a vcs3. Imagine the horror when I found out that they threw everything in a skip when the course ended. Fortunately someone found out and rescued most of it. The instruments are now in a museum, where you can go along and play with them. Some very rare items indeed.
Yep, gotta love tantalum smoke bombs! Once saw a defibrillator that a frightened nurse had filled with extinguisher powder 🙄
I built my Clef B30 Microsynth from the kit. It was published in Everyday Electronics. A refurb is in progress.
haha yep!!! they go pop:D
Name a DIY magazine Project..... any type! musical/none musical! just any :D
Hovercraft from a vacuum cleaner motor.
Polyphony Magazine here in the states had some cool kits you could buy.
I mentioned it in my other comment but adding to this list: Everyday Electronics Microsynth (aka Clef B30).
Of course...the ETI Project 80
I remember heath kit. But not alot of magzines. I think alot of that stuff went away in the 90s sadly
Wow! Didn’t know it was Tim Orr who was behind those Powertran synths! Aye, you learn something new every day!
It's a rare breed indeed, the pianist who is also a mad electronics scientist. It's that skillset that's really going obsolete now too.
TRhis was super intersesting, I'm a first year engineering student and our first electgronics project was a VCO and ADSR then combining both signals to get a "parculiar" sounding keyboard!
Love the bugs in the kit...
Sam, if you don't have it already, the best thing you can own for tracking down solder bridges in DIY kits is a big magnifier lens built into a lamp on a spring arm. Or, use your smartphone camera as a microscope.
You did a great job fixing this thing, too! Good on ya.
Back in the early to mid 80s, I used to design and build various synth modules, from scratch. A few of these early analog function modules still exist, I look back on those times now and ponder the vast amounts of time that had been devoted to all that, sort of a lost artform in a way. Today it's completely different of course, but I still experiment with virtual modular synth engines (Voltage Modular is my favorite), and actual real hardware . . . and still mystify the neighbors in the predawn hours. As always, appreciate your videos . . .
And it still sounds better than most analogue synfs coming out these days, WOOOOOO!!
god this sounds flippin' AMAZING - great job restoring this sam!
Really appreciate your commitment and passion to work so hard to get these odd old bits of gear running!
You have encouraged me to get my Powertran Polysynth working again. I actually had it working and showed it at Synthfest a few years ago, but the last time I tried it, it wasn’t behaving.
I replaced a few smoke generators the first time around, but I think it’s time to replace them all now, plus a bit of re wiring is needed, as the original builders wiring choices are not to a standard I like (stripped wires from grey ribbon cable - very flimsy).
If you happen to open and service it, would you be so kind and make a couple of pictures of the double sided boards top+bottoms and share them? I'm trying to re-draw this beast in kicad, but it's hard to follow from the old low res magazine scans, plus there seems to be a couple of differences between the schematics and the published layout.
@@icnagy I will see what I can do. I actually plan to remove the 2 main boards and replace the jumper wires between the boards with AMP-100 connectors, or something similar, which will improve the reliability over the current build and aid with serviceability in the future. It will likely be at least a few months before I get round to it.
By the way, we’re you trying to do your rework from a scan or the original magazine images. Scanning these pages introduces a whole new level of error depending on the resolution, contrast and scanner quality.
Lovely to hear this beast resurrected and singing once more 🎵🎶
Such a classic sound. I was instantly transported back to the 80s listening to this thing. So cool that is was "relatively easy" to get back into working order. Other than the hours/days/weeks spent troubleshooting, of course. Thanks for sharing!
I've been watching you for quite a while, and I must say you're musicianship is really coming along. Good work.
Amazing how they were able to work out (potentially) 8-way polyphony with just discreet logic! 😳 Top-shelf value engineering right there. Might be fun to see how those CEM3340s compare to the modern re-issue. 👍️
Honestly, this was the main thing for me. I'm sad Sam didn't explore it, as that seems like a gold mine of repurposable circuits. I am blown away, the size of that board was unreal.
My guess is it’s just a simple cascade, like the carry bit in an adder. Maybe the expander box even has the other 4, in which case it would be exactly like sticking a 4-bit adder circuit into another one to get an 8-bit adder circuit.
That said I was expecting the “empty” oscillator to cycle around in the chords, just like the single note did, but it kept the two outside voices going and only moved between the inner two. That’s slightly more complex than a cascade rollover circuit, but definitely explainable by just a couple extra AND gates.
@@kaitlyn__L So, if I understand that correctly, you're thinking they're bit-shifting the latch on the sample-and-hold opamps, effectively buffering the voltage for the CEM3340 on each note? It's not clear to me how they'd be able to keep track of note-on note-off.
I Fricken love this channel.. Always end up with a big smile on my face. Great episode, well done to Sam for saving the Powertran. Sounds so good...;-)
Well done on rescuing this - always wanted one of these since reading about it in ETI. Their big projects were so interesting to read about the designs of even those most of us had paper-rounds and could not remotelyt afford them
Sounds amazing. So glad you do what you do and post these videos!!! Someone will be watching this 100 years from now!
What
A fabulous
Video!
Very glad to have had this suggested, really exciting to listen to your explanations. Thanks to Sam for giving this to you as well!
Man credit to you for getting it done and completing the restoration. Superb video!
I made the Powertran delay. It worked first time! As I recall, it served me very well in the studio...just stumbled upon this channel - looking forward to exploring further. Well done restoring this beauty and thanks for sharing the journey.
That's a great save Sam and top work getting it back into shape! It sounds monstrous as it's basically four monos rather than something specially voiced for polyphony. Funny how it actually had a much higher scrap value until recently I guess, now pretty much all the CEM chips are once again available.
I've never heard one played before, so thanks for opening my ears!
I built a Transcendent 2000 in 1980 - it needed several mods to get it working properly - and I kept it for 5 years. I saw the Transcendent Polysynth demo'd at a London exhibition in 1981 - how I wanted one! .. but as you say: the cost! I'm so glad you found one and have it working again. You're a top guy Sam - both of you!
Love your enthusiasm. Carry on doing your stuff!
Great tour you give of the gubbins of this machine - glad you got if functioning again and putting it in the museum :)
Please keep saving these gems... You rock
This would be an amazing find! Great old synth! Reminds me of my youth playing a JUNO 106.
Dude you are pulling out some serious badboy vintage DIY gems.
So interesting to see these breathing life and sound. Top geezer 🔥🔥🔥🔥💪🏾
Wow what a great fix,and the sound is so good,this is epic Sam :)
I love this stuff, I'm glad you make these videos! Keep at it!
I'm totally amazed you find these rare old instruments. And blown away you can fix them. Great work Sir. Nicely done.
I wonder how many 21st century instruments will be fixable when they stop working ?
I desperately wanted one of these in the day! Great to finally hear it.
Your patience is incredible!
Very nice! I had one of these around 15 years back. Great to see another up and running. Quite a powerful synth for its day. Sort of a poor mans Oberheim OBXa
This was bloody fantastic, you are becoming quite the electronics expert. A real pleasure to watch.
you rock. please don't ever stop. I love this stuff. you are a hero in my eyes.
Thats sweet. Love the arch and layout.
Thank you for going into detail on the workings of the voice board
Thank You for showing this.Subbed and Liked..Had an old ARP synth mono.and a 8 voice Ensonic SQ-80 that you loaded sounds with a 3.5 in.disc..Congradulations.Glad you found it and it didn't get tossed out..Fantastic Job bringing it back to life.Really enjoyed watching you spin those pots and hearing those Thick sounds..Retired now..Really took me back to some Good Times..👍👍
That sounds so cool, especially when it's just straight up oscillating... Could toss some LFOs on the filter and boom, instant generative polysynth :D
Yeah it’s fudging cool ent it :D
There's an oddly charming, hazy sound to it I like. Sounds like something Com Truise would use.
Wow, way to go. So nice to see a great 80's synth like this restored. I actually enjoyed it's sound, it's got a lot of charm. Sweet Dreams would sound good through this for sure. Hope you can get the extra boards one day and demo them in it. Very cool for a build it yourself kit. Tangerine Dream here you come hey?
I LOVE THIS SERIES!!! This is the coolest music content EVER!
Holy oscillator, Batman! That thing sounds awesome!
Oh ! Fantastic to be able to troubleshoot it ! Love this synth 😊
I do keep this (4:28), for my sample collection. Thank you very much ! And by the way, very good job !
Great film and a great piece of diy synth!! Sounds so lovely! 😮❤
Lovely instrument, amazing work
I love the sound of it before the repair!
Thank you twice Sam: Once for showing me something that brought me right back to my late teen years and my growing love for synthesizers (of that age) and once for showing your video in the good old comfortable CZcams format :) I wonder what it would take to upgrade the transcendent to a MiDi driven polyphonic synth...
Not sure if it's because it sends me back to my youth in the 80s, but I love the sound this makes
Beautiful huge sound. Congratulations!
Sounds beautiful!
Sounds awesome! - I built a transcendent 2000 and would loved one of these !
Helo, welcome to blade runner era. NICE :-D. The little inperfections in tune are what these devices are so nice to hear.
Great demo of a surprisingly good sounding instrument.
This is fantastic work.
what a work man!! Salute!!
Sounds great! What a great kit! and great fix!
Fantastic, I've never seen such a simply laid-out poly, and using single-sided PCBs no less. You'd almost have to assume it was designed specifically to make it easy for people to build and maintain ; )
Electronics Today International August 1979
- oh yes! I still have that one!
Holy F*! when that first voice kicked in :D
Good stuff...! Really well done on this 😀
I can only imagine how much of pain this must have been. So sick man, thanks for sharing this part of synth history with us!
so you are capable to fix things… not just destroying. impressive! :)
11:00 really love the sound. reminds me to a c64 sid chip a lot.
i actually really like the sound of this synth! again, fantastic job.
5:45 thanks for resolving this sus chord I'd have been so sad if you'd left us hanging
surprised how amazing this sounds after you fixed it!
@4:29 so pleasing to the ears
brilliant video as always
Imo thats the magic about analog / analog modular. Because of the phisical restrictions you need to find workarounds for stuff you take for granted in modern synths and that way you get totally new sounds.. and also, the Powetran Polysynth just sounds so beautiful, I got so inspired when you played your chords..
Keep up your great work! When im in the UK one day of my life I no matter what i will visit your museum :D
Greets from Spain
speaking for 76 's Jean-Michelle Jarre... "dear synth, I need that for my new album called oxygen or so"