Hello good people of here,
Any synth builders around?
I want one of these :
https://www.jaspersynth.co.uk/buying-jasper/
Not sure how much it’s gonna cost but we’ll work out details.
Cheers!
K
Have you tried DIY yourself? With a bit of practice and some fairly basic soldering/desoldering tools you should find it fairly easy to populate the board. I don’t know what sort of prices folks charge for assembly but if it’s by the hour you could save yourself a tidy sum.
Some kits have better build doc’s than others but there are loads of resources on the net to help you with schematics, component substitutes etc etc. The DIY scene is pretty huge these days and well supported.
Setting up and calibrating once it’s built may present more of a challenge but that will depend on the actual project. I’ve not been right through the build docs for the kit you mentioned. Even so a half decent multimeter should get you most of the way there. You can even pick up old CRT oscilloscopes for peanuts these days (and I’d recommend a 'scope of some description to anyone getting into the DIY scene; you’ll wonder how you ever managed before!) or you can buy PC based 'scopes for cheap too. 20MHz bandwidth (fairly common on old 'scopes) should be more than enough for audio work, especially analog synth circuits.
I’ve been fault finding/repairing/building since my teens and I’ve always found it an enjoyable hobby. Plus the feeling of building something of your own and then playing it is fantastic. Real job satisfaction.
You could pick up a little DIY kit such as a simple guitar pedal and practice your soldering skills on that. If you mess up its no big deal (and you’ll soon learn how to rectify your mistakes too). Bonus is that you’ll hopefully get a working pedal at the end of the day too!
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I think a kit like that would be around 5-6 hours assembly time, since the Wasp is based on CMOS circuits using dividers I don’t think too much calibration is needed, I guess the average hourly rate for a tech would be £20-40 per hour.
Soldering is extremely simple as long as you have good eyesight and a steady hand, and of course plenty of practice - which doesn’t take too long.
However it helps to have certain knowledge before embarking on even a fairly simple project, things like component identification and orientation, the correct tools and a workspace, which leads me to my next point - check your local area for a hacker/maker space. They will be likely to have all the tools and advice you need to do it yourself.
One final piece of advice from someone who has built tons of stuff, don’t buy cheap unleaded solder, it is frankly crap and will result in problems from the start to down the road, pick a good trusted brand, for DIY projects I only ever used leaded solder, it is much easier to use and gives a better end result, just be sure to take the relevant safety precautions (also for unleaded too) good ventilation, a fume extractor and washing hands after finished.
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Yeah do it yourself unless there’s a reason your unable. You can practice on something before diving into it just to get the technique right!
All good advice above.
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I build lot of stuff ie more than ten shruthi including xts, anushri, mb 6582 (very hard build) midibox seq v4, gorf, lxr…as long as there is no smd, i can build it for you if you offer me a kit…
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Thanks all for the replies, I’ve actually thought about building it myself but I was trying avoid going into that rabbit hole … Well from one side I have 0 experience soldering from the other it’s a nice skill to have … But still not sure I can commit the time right now
Hi
I could sell my jasper
Ravenna Italy