VCF‑77 «Cascade»
Four-pole transistor-ladder low-pass with matched pairs sorted by hand. Self-oscillates cleanly above 8.2 on the resonance dial and tracks 1V/oct across five octaves.
Resonance Instruments · Bergen, Norway · est. 2017
EMBER‑8
An eight-voice desktop synthesizer, hand-soldered in batches of forty-eight. Two drifting oscillators per voice, a 24 dB ladder filter, and an analog-voiced delay line — all of it wired into this page. The unit below is live.
Open live panel
flip POWER · keys A–K play · drag knobs
8 voices
2 osc / voice
−24 dB/oct ladder
340 ms echo
batch 07 · nº 031
01Power the unit
This is not a mock-up. Flip POWER, then play the keys — pointer or A S D F G H J K. Drag knobs vertically. Double-click a knob to reset it.
RESONANCE
EMBER‑8 · POLYPHONIC DESKTOP UNIT · SER. 07‑031
STANDBY — FLIP POWER TO WAKE THE VOICE CARD
02Signal path
The diagram below is not decoration — it is the literal Web Audio graph running behind the panel. Every stage you hear passes through these five blocks, in this order.
Drift, on purpose
Each voice runs two oscillators detuned by ±7 cents — the amount a well-used transistor VCO wanders after twenty minutes of warm-up. It is why a single held key sounds wider than it should.
A filter that fights back
The cutoff knob sweeps 80 Hz to 12 kHz on an exponential curve. Push resonance past 8 and the ladder starts ringing on its own; at 10 it whistles like a self-oscillating 4-pole should.
Echo with memory
The delay is a single 340 ms line with 45% regeneration — dark, slightly blurred repeats voiced after the bucket-brigade chips we scavenge from broken 1979 tape units.
03Rack modules
The Ember-8's voice card began life as three Eurorack modules. We still build all three, faceplate by faceplate, in brushed 6061 aluminum.
DLY‑9 «Tape Ghost»
Analog-voiced echo, 20–900 ms, with a wow-and-flutter fader that smears repeats the way worn capstans do. Feedback into self-oscillation is the intended failure mode.
ENV‑4 «Quad Helix»
Four looping ADSR generators with end-of-cycle triggers, chainable into slow generative clockwork. Attack times from 0.8 ms to 45 seconds without stepping.
04Specification
Every Ember-8 ships with a signed calibration sheet. These are the numbers ours are held to.
| Voices | 8, fully polyphonic, last-note priority |
|---|---|
| Oscillators | 2 per voice, analog-modelled, ±7¢ controlled drift |
| Waveforms | sine · triangle · sawtooth · square, per-patch |
| Filter | −24 dB/oct resonant low-pass (Cascade VCF‑77 core), 80 Hz – 12 kHz |
| Delay | analog-voiced 340 ms line, 45% regeneration, wet/dry front-panel mix |
| Envelope | fast-attack AR per voice, 5 ms / 350 ms, exponential release |
| Keyboard | 8-key C-major touch bed, QWERTY mirror A–K |
| Metering | dual scopes — time domain & 2048-point FFT — plus 10-segment VU |
| Connectivity | stereo line out, USB‑C (class compliant), CV clock in |
| Power | 12 V DC, 800 mA, center-negative; universal PSU included |
| Dimensions | 428 × 176 × 68 mm — 84 HP equivalent |
| Weight | 2.9 kg, powder-coated steel chassis, brushed 6061 trim |
05Ordering
We build forty-eight units per batch and we do not build faster. Batch 07 closes when the last serial is claimed.
BATCH 07 · 19 OF 48 REMAINING
EMBER‑8
€1,849 / $1,990 · VAT incl. in EU
- Hand-assembled & burn-tested for 72 hours in Bergen
- Signed calibration sheet, serial-engraved rear plate
- Universal PSU, braided stereo cable pair, dust cover
- Five-year bench warranty — we repair, we never replace boards
Ships in 6 weeks from deposit. One unit per person, no resellers.
The bench
Resonance is four people above a boat workshop on Bergen's Skuteviken quay. Maren Kolstad winds every inductor. Ove Lindqvist matches transistor pairs by hand, four hundred at a sitting. Two apprentices do the burn-in racks and argue about coffee.
We publish our schematics after each batch sells out, because instruments should outlive their makers. Batch 01 units from 2019 are still on tour with three bands we know of and one we suspect.
— M. Kolstad, founder · Skuteviken, Bergen