Starsky Carr Unleashes the Erica Synths Elektor Formant: Vintage DIY Goes Modular Mayhem

Back in the 70s, building a Formant was a marathon, not a sprint. Starsky flips through original Elektor magazines, showing off the step-by-step agony: etching your own PCBs, drilling holes, and deciphering circuit diagrams that sometimes had, let’s say, creative errors. Only the most stubborn synth nerds survived this gauntlet, which is why original Formants are rarer than a polite comment on Gearslutz. If you managed to finish one, you earned your stripes—and probably a few scars.

Erica Synths haven’t just cloned the Formant—they’ve turbocharged it. The new build keeps the chunky analog soul but adds modern touches that make it less of a nightmare to use. We’re talking MIDI input, normalled connections, and voltage-controlled LFOs. You can actually play this thing without needing a patch cable octopus or a PhD in frustration.

Starsky points out the upgrades: headphone outs, dual sample and hold, mixers, a phaser, and a wave processor that can twist your sound into all sorts of shapes. The original was a DIY badge of honour, but this version is a playable, patchable street weapon. It’s still got the vintage attitude, but now it’s less likely to end up in a skip when you move house.

This is where the Formant bares its teeth. Starsky runs through the VCOs—three of them, each with a fistful of classic waveforms and enough modulation to make your head spin. The filters are thick, nasty, and lush when they want to be, with 24dB, 18dB, 12dB, and 6dB slopes, plus a resonant filter module for extra formant-y weirdness.

The sound demos are pure modular filth: arps, walls of sound, and drum workouts that show off the system’s range. You get a taste of the divider, wave processor, and phaser, but trust me, the real magic is in the video. Watching Starsky patch, tweak, and push the Formant to its limits is a reminder that some synths are meant to be heard, not just described.