Anyone think someone will eventually reverse engineer these and do another production run on the popular ones? Seems like it could be done and synths would stop having to be sacrfised to let others live.
Hello,
I believe it is a good idea and someone will do it. I believe it will have to be either you or me…Or perhaps the Chinese(very cool people really).
Have you checked out this site?
http://www.synthtech.com/cem/cemdata.html
You used to be able to buy the more popular CEMs from them, at a price.
I look forward when there are esoteric companies that will make aftermarket synth parts…like for old cars hobbiests work on.
P.S.,
A few years back I spoke to one of the more well known synth techs in the industry about the comeback of analog synths…This was about the same time Korg released the Prophecy, and then the Nord followed. He said “No way, It will NEVER happen!”…“Think of the cost” blah, blah, blah.
And now look at what has happened. And I can say that I knew it, and I am a nobody…I just like to buy them. Sometimes people can be jaded by the music “biz” and forget what it is all about…The love of sound.
I am gonna put on my JMJ T-Shirt and have memories now.
I vehemently hope that whoever does it will take an affordability tactic, designing chips that DON’T have to be top-notch. This way, manufacturing will be pointed at the mass market, rather than the high-end market.
A unit like the P-600 with slimmed-down Curtis technology might better searve the Clavia Nord Lead / MicroKorg market than one that points more at the Memorymoog, or the A6 Andromeda.
The new DSI Poly Evolver KB has Curtis chips and filters. It sounds great and is actually affordable. Are they exactly the same as Curtis chips of old? Don’t know, but the new DSI KB sounds great, bottom line. I WILL have one soon. 
Mike T.
The Evolver is using a newer designed osc chip originally made for Tom Oberheim/Marion Systems.
I don’t recall if they have filters though.
It is very hard to make chips like these in a “cheaper” fashion also.
They have to do the job necessary and it requires a fair amount of precision.
Otherwise, labor is spent testing parts or other circuits have to be built to compensate for a problem, if even possible. One could certainly design a new vco or vcf or whatever, but with the high initial costs of basic linear chip design, there wouldn’t be a huge margin to begin with. In the late 70’s, early 80’s, these ICs were being purchased in huge numbers by Roland, Moog and others. This brought costs down. Today, it’s a chicken or the egg problem: One can’t design a synth around a non-existant chip and chip design and manufacturing wouldn’t be profitable to do without large quantity buyers.
Personally, I think the “music chip” idea should be scrapped and instead, small surface mount modules made that do the same things. Slightly larger, but both more serviceable and lower cost for small production runs.
It would also be possible to modify a vco, vcf or whatever much more easily by capable techs into surface mount technology.