John Bowen Synth Design

In all honesty your Solaris presets from the plug in were a great learning tool.
I never had the oppurtunity to thank you.

There Ya' Go...

Awesome! I can't wait to hear the presets Paul.

Thanx John - yes I'm certainly over the moon about a Solaris arriving on my doorstep one Thursday :D

Unfortunately I had to be up early on Friday (4am) to visit a friend's studio, with a round trip of nearly 600 miles the next day, but I couldn't resist the thrill of unpacking and firing it up to listen to a few presets before having an early night. My first impressions were a great big beaming smile. As we say in these parts using Solaris will be a doddle ! (http://www.thefreedictionary.com/doddle) :lol:

The multiple displays make it easy to keep track of what you're doing. This is an interface that will encourage users of all abilities to explore and try things out. The good thing is that you can start off with just the basics and gradually delve deeper as you become more familiar with it. Working with the plug-in has enabled me to learn how complex patches can get, but beginners will be easily find their way around.

The presets give a good idea of what the Solaris is capable of, but time will show how versatile and complex Solaris really is.

I’ve created a few really odd presets, just to see how far I can push things, assigning the ribbon controller and joystick to make things interesting and enabling multiple parts which work well on their own, but demonstrate complexity when all are active.

I’ll be exploring things for a while yet as there’s such a lot to try. Having 4 of most everything certainly lets the creative juices flow and makes me glad that John stuck with it even through some really difficult times.

I know how much effort has gone into Solaris and I’d like to thank John for sharing his vision and experience to bring this project to fruition.

OK, so...the very first person to put his money down for a Solaris order was Paul Kuchar. Paul had been a staunch supporter of my Scope plug-ins (Zarg Music products), and was familiar with the Solaris on that level, so I appreciate that his enthusiasm carried over to ordering the hardware unit immediately upon my taking deposits.

As well, Paul has created a number of presets for the Solaris (and other) plug-ins, and so I asked him if he would be interested in having one of the units we prepared for Messe, or just wait for the official production to get his unit. I was counting on him being OK with a Messe unit, as I wanted to see what kind of presets he would generate for it (Paul has always done some very interesting things with his presets!).

Needless to say, he was quite happy to receive one of the production units from Messe, even though it still has a beta version of the OS and so on...and he already has sent in a small number of presets. So technically, I could say we have shipped our first unit....although the OS is still not fully finished, nor the preset organization done, so this probably doesn't qualify in most circles.

The thing is, Paul wanted to blog about his experiences with it first-hand, so for him to do this, I thought I should explain the situation. Over to you, Paul....

OMG!?? No? zzzzzz........

Ankyuvarumush.......

Actually, the binder with logo idea is a great one. Personally, I'd be prepared to pay extra to get something like this with the limited edition synths.

I have to see if I still have one of those around...then find out what the costs would be.

[quote="John Bowen"]All pre-order customers will be getting a direct email about the status of their delivery.
Currently the manual is planned as a .pdf file only.[/quote]

Since many of us will end up printing the thing out anyway, a lovely addition for us owners might be a binder with the solaris logo, ala the binders we used to get for the Sequential Circuits products (I think I still have my Pro One or Prophet 600 binder someplace...)

Some of you will remember the black binder with the see through cover. That was so cool. To this day it's one of those things I remember from buying "my first new analog" synths. Still have a SCI sustain pedal, too, from my Drumtraks. Ahh....

Anyway... just a thought :-)

Arrgghh! Now the anticipation is starting to become unbearable......!

Thanks for the quick answer. Now I understand.
So only a few weeks left. That's great!

Thanks for your interest, docanyder!
I can clarify, yes. As the units are built, they will go out to the customers in the order received. This includes EMC, our German distributor. You can think of them like a ‘pre-order customer’ as well, so they have gotten in line for a number of units, and they will get their units before the last ones we build are finished. This means those who who are the last pre-order customers will get their units following when EMC has them, and I am assuming that at least some of the EMC units will reach their dealers before I get to the end of the first build - hence the mentioned timing from that video and my latest Web site post.

Hello everybody!
I have followed this forum for some time now and the more I learn about the solaris, the more I'm convinced that it will be a wonderful instrument.
You are doing a great job, Mr. Bowen! Thank you for building this no-compromise synthesizer!

In the Frankfurt-Messe video you mention that the solaris will be in the stores in germany by the end of may. Could you please confirm this, because I thought that even the last preorder-customers had to wait longer (purchase page mentions shipping by end of June). Thanks for clarification. Can't wait to get one of those :D

All pre-order customers will be getting a direct email about the status of their delivery.
Currently the manual is planned as a .pdf file only.

I've been waiting for someone to ask this, but lacked the courage myself. "Are we there yet?"