At one point in time I was really into music, so much into it that I was thinking a lot about building my own instruments. I still have plans to someday build a left hand version of a Thunderbird bass which are the most beautiful guitar I know.

Through a friend I got in contact with a friend of his that was apparently building his own synthesizers, something that intrigued me a lot, it wasnīt the first synthesizer he was working on and he forwarded me to a Canadian company called Paia that made various kits around musical equipment, which would be a nice introduction to what I was attempting. I wasnīt late to place an order for the Fatman synthesizer and a nice little case for it. I thought that with the soldering skills I learned in school ten years ago and my passion about the project would bring me all the way home, which it did eventually.

I got the kit which was basically a circuit board, a plastic bag full of components and a nice little metal case. After thoroughly going through the instructions and inspecting all the parts I got to work, trying to take huge care to get all the soldering points nice and clean looking. After a few nights of soldering everything in place, and getting myself a suitable power adapter it was time for the big moment of truth, which of course didnīt happen so easy.

For a long time I was working on solving the problems, and the biggest hassle with electronics can be to actually isolate the problem. Working with a multitester and the circuit board layout in the manual I had to trace signals along their paths and monitor values here and there. Iīd say I was pretty successful doing this and reading the circuit schematics despite the fact that I had never done anything similar before. As I remember it lead to purchasing a new IC circuit at one point (which I happened to short and destroy when testing), and I also found some bad soldering points where the power just didnīt went through as it was supposed to.

After the first turns of inspection I actually got a tone going through the output which could be manipulated with the knobs, it seemed like the actual synthesizer part was all right. Now I just had the biggest problem left to solve. The synthesizer is controlled through a Midi device, but in no way did the output signal change as I pressed the keys on the keyboard. The Midi signals is interpreted by a processor and getting into that just felt like too much for me at the time. I traced the signals going into the processor which seemed to be all right.

A while later when getting enough strength back to have another go at this thing I got into contact with the support at Paia, a very nice guy I have to say that had previously provided me with a lot of information while troubleshooting this thing. It all ended up with him sending me a replacement processor for the Midi handling and like a miracle this contraption came to life at it was supposed to, it only took me three years! It was such a relief to assemble the case and just wrap this project up, all the time invested was worth it two times over. Iīm quite proud of myself for actually pulling this project off despite the problems I had with it. Apart from most of the time having fun with it I learned a ton of stuff of course, that might just be the most valuable part of all!