Sounds great! However, wonder what role the tubes actually play in synthesis. Is it just a normal synth with a built-in amp?
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Why not, I guess? But using tubes for the display really shouts “form over function” to me.
I’m not an electrical engineer or anything close to it, so I can’t explain the “why” but tubes can be used for oscillators, filters, VCAs, etc… – all the components of a synth can be formed using tubes, as I understand it. So the tubes could be playing all sorts of roles.
Curious why the mono demo if it’s poly. That’s not very many tubes for a poly, maybe it’s paraphonic or there are mini tubes used inside.
On YouTube it says the tubes are for the VCF, VCA and Overdrive. Single tube VCAs and Overdrives are fairly easy to do. I suspect the VCF is mostly a solid state design with the tube or two shoehorned in as it would take a lot of tubes to have something like a Moog low pass made with primarily tube tech.
The nixie display is cool. Having built some tube stuff myself I do love this kind of thing. For anyone looking for a similar sound cheaply, I will say that you can achieve similar audio results running a synth through one of the multiple tube VCAs in euro.
Cheers!