I HAVE THE POWER!!!!!!!!!!11

First, a little correction. The MFOS Synth Ultimate is not modular. It is a patchable synthesizer. It has all the jacks and cables of a modular but is built into a single panel. So you can't add or remove modules, but you can patch around them. My plan is to get this thing built and use it as the heart of a bigger truly modular system eventually.

Here's the panel silkscreen from the MFOS website:




So it's got 3 VCOs, 1 VCF, 1 AR generator, 1 VCA, 2 LFOs, a mixer with white noise and external in, and Sample & Hold.

MFOS is currently developing an expander which I'm also planning to build. I'll house it in the same cabinet. It's slated to have an ASDR generator, another VCA, a state variable VCF, a ring mod, and a mixer. So that's 14+ (there are also attenuators) modules for a couple hundred bucks. If I were to buy all that from, say Doepfer or Synthesizers.com it would be at least $1,200.

So without further ado...

The heart of a modular/patchable synth is the power supply. No power = no worky. So I built the one MFOS recommends. It's a wall wart based deal. The wall wart is an off-the-shelf 12v AC/AC adapter... basically just a transformer that plugs into the wall and steps down mains voltage from 120VAC to 12VAC. It connects to the circuit I built (pictured below) which half-wave rectifies it, splitting it into +12VDC and -12VDC, more or less. The ripply DC waves are smoothed courtesy of the six capacitors in the pic below (never used caps that big before!), then they get regulated to a steady +/- 12V by the two voltage regulators.














Pretty straightforward build. The original PCB was double-sided, but I opted to make it single-sided. Way easier. I just used a jumper on the bottom of the board because the top of the board only had 1 trace. Saved me a lot of agony because making 2-sided PCBs is a PAIN! I haven't tested it yet because I forgot to order the wall wart. I'll get that with my next order which will also include double-sided blank PCB stock for the main board and all the resistors. Yeah, I etch my own PCBs 'cuz I'm a cheap bastard and a glutton for punishment. I don't get flawless results as you can see in the pic, but it's good enough for me to get down.