Personal web pages of

Tim Stinchcombe

PE Minisonic Articles/Schematics & PE Sound Synthesizer Articles

Minisonic

Following on from the Practical Electronics magazine PE Sound Synthesizer of 1973, the magazine published a series of five articles on the smaller Minisonic synthesizer at the end of 1974/start of 1975; later there then followed the Minisonic 2. The Minisonic 2 articles are available in several places on the web, for example here, linked from Julian Bunn's interesting page on his Minisonic 2. Recently I have come to understand that the articles for the original Minisonic are not on the web, so I have quickly scanned them and included them here (the first four files are all about 4megs big):

Note there were a few errata too:

And finally I noted that a PCB plus kit of parts became available, so I scanned an advert for that too—considering the cover price of the magazine was 30p, the £43 asking price for the lot strikes me as quite expensive, and was certainly way beyond my means back then!:

Late in 2020 I became aware that the articles for the original PE Sound Synthesizer were not as easily accessible on the web as they once were—they were hosted at a rather useful website, Cloned Analog Gear, which is apparently no more, and whilst it is available at The Wayback Machine, I decided to download the scans and upload them here:

Part 1: Introductory article & spec

Part 2: Stabilised power supply

Part 3: Voltage controlled oscillators and inverter

Part 4: Ramp generators & input amplifiers

Part 5: Sample-hold & noise generator

Part 6: Tone control & experimental sound studio

Part 7: Reverberation amplifier, ring modulator & peak level meter

Part 8: Envelope shaper

Part 9: Voltage controlled & differential amplifiers

Part 10: Keyboard unit, log law oscillators

Part 11: Hold, modulation amplifiers, mixer and envelope shaper for keyboard unit

Part 12: Final board assembly and PSU for keyboard unit

Part 13: Concluding article, keyboard frame & final tuning

The were two errata: one appears on p427, right at the end of Part 4; the other appeared as a Points Arising in Part 9, Oct 73, was mentioned on p887, and I have scanned it here.

[Page last updated: 06 Nov 2020]