Ever dreamed of a synth that performed just as you wished and used only the best of the best premium parts? Well so did the good folks over at Knifonium. The difference is most of us dream of the dream machine and they (Knifonium) have the skill and resources to put it all together.

The Knifonium SUPER MONOPHONIC LUXURY SYNTH has 25 Tubes, no mechanical contacts, rare wooden casing, wooden keys like a vintage Fender Rhodes, 4th order ladder filter, a ring modulator and is totally hand made. The Knifonium is such fine dining that it can only be made in batches of 6 and takes a entire year to build.

Perhaps most awe-inspiring is the price tag which weighs in at a whopping 12,000 Euros. I guess this should be no surprise as I recently reviewed and tested a faithful recreation of the classic FAIRCHILD 670 tube compressor which weighed in at nearly 19,000 Euros. It was just as heavy on the tubes as the Knifonium. At this level of construction, design and quality this synth is anything but over priced and I am willing to bet that the sound demos pale in comparison to how it really sounds in person.

Knifonium describes the synth as “a 25 tube monophonic synthesizer with a 4th order ladder filter and a ring modulator. Second batch (6 units, 12000euros each) now for sale. Keyboard is a 3 octave traditional wooden construction, extremely robust and stable. Fast action, good touch. Switching uses sealed reed-switches operated by magnets. No mechanical contacts to deteriorate. After touch and plug-in resistor modules determine scale. These modules can be made to order for any tuning or temperament, as long as the order of notes is ascending. Easy to change in 2 minutes.”

Knifonium Basic Specs:

Oscillator 1 (5 tubes)

  • -Sawtooth, Triangle, Pulse, Sine
  • -Sync
  • -FM
  • Octaves 64, 32, 16, 8, 4, 2 -Coarse tune in semitone steps-Fine tune in +/- 50 cents.

Oscillator 2 (3 tubes)

  • -Sawtooth, Triangle, Sine
  • -is master for sync and modulator for FM
  • -Octaves 64, 32, 16, 8, 4, 2 -Coarse tune in semitone steps-Fine tune in +/- 50 cents.

Noise (2 tubes)

  • -Noise generator is a special tube that is subjected to strong magnetic field. -White, Pink and Red.

Ring modulator (3 tubes)

  • -Input is sine waves from both oscillators or anything from external inputs, feedback et cetera, drive volume can be adjusted
  • -Very wide nonlinear range available.

Mixer (2 tubes)

  • -A tube op amp, virtual earth mixer with one external input.
  • -3 of the input levels can be modulated.

Filter (7 tubes)

  • -4th order ladder filter.
  • -Can go from clean to messy to violent depending on levels and resonance.

VCA (2 tubes)

  • -Transformer coupled variable mu pentode design.
  • -More than 40dB of linear range. Capable of total shut down. A switch to increase internal level by 10 dB for extremely nice distortion.

Output amplifier (1 tube)

  • -Pentode tube, transformer coupled
  • -3 operation modes for different distortions.
  • -Provides truly professional transformer balanced output that will drive anything, anywhere.

KNIFONIUM SUPER MONOPHONIC LUXURY SYNTH Construction

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Keep up with Knifonium at their website and Facebook page

 

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