The “Handy Andy” Toolbox Synth
- Mutable Instruments ‘Anushri/Anookum’
- Benjolin
- +/- 9 and +5vVDC operation
- Midi Adapter add on, with CV and Gate inputs.
I am lucky. My partner Cheryl, volunteers at a thrift store and is able to purchase really cool containers, boxes, and ‘stuff’. She bought me this children’s tool box, and I had it kicking around for about a year waiting for the right synth to use.
I finally finished the Mutable Instrument’s Anushri analog synth. The bare PCB was bought from a friend in a Facebook group who made a batch called ‘Anookum’. I am not keen on the particular synthesizer, but for messing around and using it for a small performance machine on drone day, or a synth meet up/demo, it is cool enough. I also had a PCB for a benjolin. Is a benjolin a synth? noisemaker? or an instrument in its own right? See it here.
The problem I had was, I did not want to use two separate power adapters. The benjolin is +/-9V while the Anushri was +5, so I built a new power supply for both machines, that all used a 12V AC wall wart.
The fact is, they both use a CV/Gate scheme for control and I thought the two would work great together. The Anushri takes midi input and can output CV to the Benjolin, and the circle that audio back into the Anushri. Confused? yea, well you can get some pretty weird sound patterns with this machine.
