When I think about people who make things like synthesizers and drum machines and controllers — real close-to-the-metal type of stuff — I imagine graybeards sitting in cluttered workshops, making tiny alterations with a soldering iron which changes the output and sounds in ways I don’t understand and can’t possibly explain.
It has come to my attention that these electric sorcerers are actually just people — fathers, mothers, daughters, sons — and sometimes well-known artists in their own right. Anyone that has lingered on the early F Communications label catalog is familiar with the records of David Jacopin, aka Taho. He’s also released records on Ovum, KMS, Delsin and, in 2021, the Détroit EP with Brian Kage on Michigander.
And now he also makes hardware. Frustrated that the MIDI controllers don’t feel like “real” synthesizers, he decided to create his own, “combining my background in electronics and computer science with my love for solid, beautifully crafted instruments.”
ROBOTRON is that device, created by his company Viper Synths to bring “the authentic physical feel of vintage synths” with the “flexibility and versatility of modern digital MIDI control” to give digital audio workstations “the slick, satisfying feeling of legendary synthesizers.”
“Feel” is the keyword here. Beyond function, the look of the ROBOTRON is absolutely striking: made with a solid metal enclosure and sapelli wood sides, designed either orange-on-black or steel-on-blue. The knobs and buttons were selected to evoke those on Moog synths and Sequential Circuits instruments. Do you feel like you can reach through the page and touch this? Then you might be the ideal customer for a ROBOTRON of your own.
For specs, the ROBOTRON features 26 potentiometers, 8 switches, 100% assignable, 16 MIDI channel selection, OLED screen and is fully USB MIDI compliant plug-and-play.
Each ROBOTRON is hand-made by Jacopin. “ROBOTRON is not a cheap, mass produced unit,” Jacopin warns. “This is a boutique device strictly for discerning hardware lovers.” Despite anxiety about the monetary implications of some of those words, ROBOTRON retails at €399, which isn’t expensive at all.
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