ETI 4600 Owner  Val Starr's Page

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At the time all the construction was being done on my work bench with the boards just laying around with no case and panel. I was about to do further testing of another VCO but then came the crunch, no sound what-so-ever. My ego deflated slightly so I went back to basics using just the first VCO purchased and PSU but still had no output. Although I had built numerous circuits over the years I could not find the problem. I then discovered through JayCarr there was one other person in Canberra that was also building the ETI 4600 whom I had contacted, he was much further advanced in construction than me, (hey he was single with no commitments, and living at home with mum so money was not option). I arranged to meet with this Electronics Wizard taking over just the one VCO and PSU, he only took a few minutes to discover my PSU had an open circuit resistor and not providing the required voltage. I had never even thought about checking the outputs of the power supply, it was too simple, and why the resistor died later is beyond me but I suspect it was because everything was loose on my bench with boards sitting on top of nuts and bolts that something may have shorted out.

It was now early 1975 and as things were getting a bit messy in my shed I decided to do a lot of the project on our lounge room floor and it was so much warmer than the ole tin shed. I do at least recall veneering the case I built then using my wife’s iron to heat and glue the veneer with our young kids watching on. I was now able to at least mount the keyboard. Due to the fact that the front panel was very expensive I decided in the interim to make my own from aluminium. The panel took considerable time in marking out and drilling the holes but didn't have to be perfect as I was intending to purchase the real thing at the end. I must admit at the time I thought the end would never come due to so much more to go. The attached photo found by my wife shows the 4600 in our lounge room with the home made front panel, you may be able to recognise some of the aluminium knobs I used taken from past projects. I recall the date as June 1975 the cake and three candles in the photo were a celebration for my sons third birthday at the end of June 1975. And note the wires for testing the unit hanging loosely at the front.

It wasn't long before I assembled everything I had finished so far onto the panel, I had enough to fire it up and test as a real synthesizer and not just oscillator sounds. I hooked the output of the unit into our HMV stereo HI-FI and I recall I had goose bumps on my arms when I was first pressed a key juggled a few knobs and heard some real synthesizer controlled sounds with the filtering etc, etc. At the time I thought all my problems in the music world were now solved forever, what I could do, and will do with this fantastic ETI 4600 when I finish it. My life was now back in order, I needed nothing else this was truly exciting. Encouraged even more by the sounds and my dreams to come, I gradually completed the whole kit with a real front panel by the end of 1975. The front panel knobs were the last purchase which were on behalf of my parents in law who gave me the money for my birthday in Sept 1975 that’s how I remembered the date . Waiting for the over 90 knobs to arrive was like waiting for a new born baby to be born, my priorities were a bit mixed up in those good ole days. Once the knobs were installed the birth of the ETI 4600 was complete. And yes it was given a simple name, ''SYNIE" , probably not original but my wife and I have lots of memories of Synie, good ones for me some not so good for her. It took just on two years. I know there may be a photo somewhere of the completed unit but my wife and I have hunted high and low without success at the moment [webmaster - now found and included in the photos].

Mind you in between the time of constructing the unit it wasn't all smooth sailing. I remember reading all the nasty things that could happen to the CMOS chips by static electricity and despite my care in making sure everything was grounded and I wasn't struck by lightning I still destroyed a number of the chips. I did later start using chip sockets to give myself more insurance in Chip Safety. I still have various spare CMOS chips from those days in my parts box.

Setting up the unit wasn't too difficult following all the instructions in the mags. I borrowed an oscilloscope from my father in law and was quite excited when I saw the sine and square waves on the display. Within a short time the VCO's became unstable and frequently needed adjustment. I found the unit drifted a bit and became a little too unstable, although I discovered a lot of this was due to the cheaper variety trim pots provided in the kits the main problem may have been due to my music room being situated in a tin shed in the backyard with many cold damp and frosty days and nights followed by extreme heat in the summer. I gradually also built a new brick music room which did solve many of the damp problems. I must add that a few years after having built the unit I upset a fellow muso and discovered one morning my music room had been broken into and amongst other items the synthesizer was severely damaged to the extent that the perpetrator swung open the front panel and ripped out a lot of the ribbon cable from the boards. Although upsetting, I soon had the unit going again.

I had many a muso come and view and play the ETI 4600. I myself spent hours and hours just twiddling knobs and trying to emulate instruments and sounds. In 1975 I had an uncle visit from Germany and in preparation I set everything up to produce the sound of a train including the choo, choo, and whistle, fading in and out, I even had the clank clank, it was very realistic. Probably my main use of the unit was just that, trying to emulate different sounds. I did a number of original recordings with the ETI 4600 the recording which gradually deteriorated on those cold damp and frosty reel to reel tapes I also had stored in that old tin shed music room. It was some ten years later in the 80's that the 4600 was put into the background when I purchased the new Roland DX7 FM Poly synthesizer which cost not much more than the price to build the ETI 4600. I still have the DX7.

In conclusion, despite any drawbacks that may have been, the ETI was an amazing unit for its time and I always give credit to the designer and to ETI for producing the unit, and lets not forget JayCarr Electronics in Australian for being brave enough to provide the complete kit. JayCarr are still around to this day. The old ETI would have been so much more improved if at the time we had the more modern, smaller and reliable components, but that’s the nature of everything these days. Something else just came to mind. I also recall a short time after having built the 4600 someone somewhere was designing a board where you could use the 4600 digitally through a PC but whatever happened is beyond me.

What became the fate of my ETI 4600. Almost 30 years later my wife and I moved residence in 2001 and having a much much smaller music room, space was a premium. From our new house, I think it was in 2002 that I sold the ETI 4600 for a pittance to a young muso. This young guy never even tried out the unit but was so impressed with all the knobs, his statement was "Wow
look at all the knobs". Despite the veneer coming adrift at the back and sides he practically ran out of the house with it. And believe it or not I always regretted having sold it. In my electronics constructing career the ETI 4600 was the top of the class, my major project ever to this day, and a few bills went unpaid just to construct it. One thing I didn't add was that in the later years I had built and installed a sequencer that ETI produced in their publication, this let me do some automated sounds and riffs. I
mounted this on the right hand side of the unit. In conclusion I am surprised that I never contracted some disease from the hours and hours of soldering fumes inhaled from constructing just the ETI 4600.

This now brings me to the start of this story, and to this site. By coincidence this morning before I discovered this site, I had placed an add on our local net music for sale site asking whether anyone out there in my home town had an ETI 4600 as I just wanted to speak to the person in view that it may be the young muso who purchased my unit, having forgotten who it was. I always wondered what had become of it. I still don’t have the room to store one amongst my host of guitars etc but I would love to find out who had the one I built all those years ago.


Regards and thank you

Val Starr
 

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