This DIY modular synth system is very much in the "Luneta" style. Stanley Lunetta was a man I never met but who seems cool and was really interested in abusing CMOS logic chips to make sounds from them. It turns out this is a really great way to have a lot of fun making a horrible racket without spending much money. If you want 1V/Octave tracking, tempwrature compensation and other things that make tonal music possible, you are going to be disappointed. If you want to make sounds like a dying cyborg trapped in a meat grinder then you are in the right place!

The banana jacks are colour-coded for easy patching – consult article #000 for more in-depth explanations:

Red – output

Black – primary (data/audio) input

Yellow – CV input

Blue – Clock input

Green – Trigger input

White – Gate input

Every article contains a schematic, a perfboard layout, a drill template for a eurorack sized panel, as well as an explanation and analysis of the circuit. The explanation is a more general overview of the circuit, while analysis is generally a deeper investigation involving calculations. You don't need to know the maths! Ignore it if you don't care! There's also a warts-and-all admission of mistakes I made so that you don't have to repeat them. Honesty is the best policy. DIY includes lots of messing up. Everything runs off a simple 9-12V DC wall-wart type adaptor, and outputs signals that range from 0-5V.

Though I have designed these to be beginner friendly, I reccomend you first know how to read a schematic and how to lay out and build something on perfboard as well as on a breadboard. Neither of these are tough though, so don't worry! You can also definitely use these projects to learn about all of those things, but ultra-simple projects to get your feet wet might make things go smoother. Don't expect everything to go right the first time. Hunting down your mistakes is part of the fun! Have patience!