This Album Cover Is a DIY Synthesizer

Music album covers often feature interesting art to help catch your eye, and ultimately, catch your ear. Synthesizer, by the band A Place to Bury Strangers, is a bit different. The album's cover is a real, working synthesizer, or at least a massive PCB that becomes a synth after you add the components.

The fully-built synth/cover is shown off in the video below by YouTuber Bay Mud, and includes a nice variety of knobs, switches, connectors, and other components. In fact, Bay Mud notes that there are so many resistors throughout the massive board that it can be difficult to figure out just where each one goes.

There are reportedly some differences between the provided schematic and the silkscreen, which can be a bit confusing. While silkscreen discrepancies are never a good thing, for a board this big one can understand how things might get jumbled up and/or updated.

There are also no real instructions for how to use it once assembled. Bay Mud notes that this is sort of the fun of it, and are you really going to read the directions before diving into your homemade synth? Probably not.

The video doesn’t show the build process per se, but gives commentary and tips on assembling your own. After the 10:00 mark, it’s mostly a demo of how it sounds, which is wild and “drony” as you might expect. It can even take audio input, allowing it to be used with an external sequencer or even as a guitar pedal.

H/t: Adafruit