I agree with a lot of what you say, but you can save a great deal of money, but you may not… eg this cost just over £100 for all modules, case, power supply, busboard… (excluding the cvpal which cost about £20)
(I’ve done another skiff with two tzfm vcos based on the 2130 but it cost a little bit more)
According to the build vid only the dip switches have to be soldered smd but those are not super tiny. The rest of the smd parts appear to be pre soldered. But I didn’t build it myself so don’t come on over to slap me if i’m wrong.
All good. Just poking around a bit for fun.
In the end it’s us guessing about someone else’s self confidence and capabilities which always feels a bit awkward afaik.
As always it might just boil down to something like start simple and see how far you can get from there. Step by step.
make your own patch bay
Or start more complicated if you have a buddy with experience.
The Elmyra is a drone synth inspired by the Lyra-8. It’s a pretty easy and highly rewarding build with zero chance of being electrocuted. It has 3 voices, a filter and a delay, a sequencer and audio in apparently (mine doesn’t have that).
Oh that audio in makes it very interesting. Are there people doing mods on these, or does the digital nature kind of prevent that I wonder.
That is an interesting idea!
You can buy big bags of assorted passives on the more consumer / hobbyist sites.
Also, when you move on to projects with BoMs, there are many opportunities to order a few extra common parts.
Unfortunately, none of that helps when you are starting out, or if you’ve given away all your spares.
Also, if you crushed that cap with pliers, get a few different sets of tweezers. I prefer the ones that you press to open rather than press to close.
It’s only a scratch. ( Not like with the knights who say ‘Ni’, in Monty Python. )
Wait until you let the smoke out of a twenty dollar part, or badly mess up a trace on the board, or spend three days tracking down a stupid problem.
It got deCAPitated ! 
Is that a decoupled decoupling cap ?
It’s definitely incapacitated…
I can’t resist laughing 
This is no way to get inducted into the DIY hall of fame.
I C, I see…
Wow that looks like that is an incredible number of components. Is there any way to checkpoint along the way, to verify you’re doing everything right?
Or is it just solder every single piece on and then turn it on and see what happens? If it doesn’t turn on properly it seems like a really large number of things you have to troubleshoot
Checking resistors as I go. Double checking polarity, double checking BOM etc
Good luck to me!
