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Fridgebuzzz Atari 400 Synth has Buttons, Knobs Galore
January 10th, 2009
This wild looking analog synthesizer gets its body from a classic Atari 400 computer – but none of its brains.
Created by Paul Rothman’s Fridgebuzzz Electronics (yes, that’s supposed to have 3 “z’s”), the simply named Atari Synth has more buttons and knobs than you can shake a stick at.
The Atari Synth is a polyphonic 12-oscillator, 3 modulator square wave synthesizer that’s controlled by arcade-style pushbuttons and potentiometers. Just press any of the 12 arcade buttons to activate the corresponding oscillator, the use the knobs to dial in the sound you’re looking for.
Presumably because the old Atari 400′s POKEY chip was too limited, they’ve gutted the old 8-bit computer and given it a brand new set of sound-producing circuitry. Ironically, the noises the Atari Synth produces sound decidedly 8-bit to me.
Fridgebuzzz doesn’t list any pricing information for this custom synth, but you can find more information and get in touch with them over on their website.
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Jeez, what a pig-ugly waste of an Atari 400.
Even ignoring the fact that I normally dislike such case mods for ruining a classic computer (normally to slap some cheapass generic PC parts inside), this is lousy.
It doesn’t use or do anything with the computer’s aesthetic design per se. It’s like the Atari was simply the bad-luck victim of a random choice of a piece of electronics equipment to gut and then slap knobs haphazardly on the outside of, wherever there was any free space.
It doesn’t work as a cod-retro gimmick, it doesn’t respect the Atari in any way, and it would have *looked* better in a plain wooden box. It’s a complete mess.