Oskitone Is the Coolest Atari Punk Console You Have Ever Seen

Most producers today create electronic music with computer software, because it is easy, versatile, and can generate really high-quality sound. But there is still a lot to be said for dedicated electronic music hardware. A true synthesizer, for example, uses actual hardware to generate musical notes, as opposed to using software or simply sampling sounds. One of the earliest examples of electronic music hardware, and of open source hardware in general, is the Atari Punk Console. The basic Atari Punk Console circuit dates all the way back to 1980 and has been built by many thousands of enthusiasts since then. But this Oskitone Atari Punk Console might just be the coolest-looking version that you have ever seen.

The original Atari Punk Console circuit was published as a “Sound Synthesizer” in a Radio Shack booklet in 1980. It was designed by Forrest Mims, and was later popularized by Kaustic Machines. They dubbed it the “Atari Punk Console” because it sounded a lot like the audio from an Atari 2600 console. An APC has a low-fi sound that is undeniably artificial. Nobody will ever mistake it for a musical instrument. That sound is thanks to the square wave that the APC produces, similar to early synthesizers that weren’t capable of generating the nice, smooth soundwaves that are necessary to reproduce that sound of a natural music note. An Atari Punk Console is also really cheap and easy to build, which is why they are so popular.

In this case, Oskitone has built a pretty standard APC circuit. The normal APC circuit calls for two 555 timers, which are the heart of the astable oscillator that produces the square waves. Potentiometers are used to adjust the parameters of those square waves. Instead of using two separate 555 timer chips, Oskitone used a dual 555 timer chip. Other than that, their circuit design is pretty much the same as any other APC. They did, however, create their own custom PCB in KiCAD. They then designed a custom 3D-printed enclosure to house that PCB, which is the real highlight of this project. I’m not going to mince words here: it looks very, very pretty. It has the kind of minimalistic simplicity that Dieter Rams would approve of, which is enhanced by the bright pastel colored filament used for the 3D printing. If you’ve been thinking about building your own APC, you should take advantage of the files that Oskitone has provided in order to build this one.