mki x es.EDU Kick Drum (kit)

There’s nothing quite like the sound of old-school analog drum machines. Especially classic kicks like Roland’s 808 and 909 are ubiquitous in electronic music. Unfortunately, their circuitry is notoriously complex and difficult to understand. Enter the mki x es.edu DIY Kick Drum kit, which not only aims to shed some light on the fundamental circuit design principles behind those circuits – but also captures their unmistakable sound as a fully-fledged Eurorack module.

Features

• Manual and CV controlled Pitch
• Accent input
• Manual decay control
• Manual pitch envelope with adjustable depth and decay time
• Tone control
• Distortion control

Technical specifications:

Power consumption6mA @ +12V; 7mA @ -12VModule width10HP

NB! All kits in these series are simple and come with extensive user manuals which can be downloaded separately, therefore we will not provide customer support in case your DIY build fails to function or similar.

Erica Synths and Moritz Klein – have developed a series of educational DIY kits under the brand name mki x es.EDU with one specific goal in mind: to teach people with little-to-no prior experience how to design analog synthesizer circuits from scratch. What you’ll find in the box is not simply meant to be soldered together and then disappear in your rack. Instead, you are wanted to be taken through the circuit design process step by step, explaining every choice they’ve made and how it impacts the finished module.

In total, they have developed 9 kits to build a fully-featured modular monosynth: a sequencer, a VCO, a wavefolder, a noise/S&H module, a mixer, a VCF, an Envelope generator, a dual VCA, and an output stereo mixer with a headphone amplifier. Additionally, an affordable eurorack case with a DIY PSU will also be available. While these kits are easy to build, they did not compromise on design and functionality. They will launch one kit every 4-6 weeks. Each kit comes with an extensive user manual (40+ pages PDF-Download) that will dive deep into not only the electronics behind each circuit but also the fundamental principles of sound synthesis. They hope that the mki x es.EDU project will inspire future engineers and will contribute to the ever-growing diversity of electronic music technology.