Wasp Special Demo
Nice demo of a really rare synth – the WASP:
“Here’s a little demo of my old Wasp Special vintage mono synth from the 1980’s. I’m trying to use all of the knobs to show they are fully functioning. This is a rare model of Wasp with a real wood case. It is serial number 00015 which suggests it was one of the first built. I’m using a modified Epiphone Valve Junior amp to play it through. The sound is being picked up by the built in mic on the Vado camera I’m filming with so the sound reproduction isn’t great. I hope you find the video useful. I will be parting company with the Wasp soon.”
Here’s some more details about the WASP:
The Wasp Special is a bizarre monosynth from the late 70s. What an absolutely nasty-sounding synth. It’s easy to love it! ^_^
The Wasp’s filter design “abuses” digital inverters as if they were analog op-amps, leading to distortion, “grunge” and other “nasty” artifacts that define the specific sound of its filter, available in LP, BP and HP flavors…yummy.
The “Special” is a second-generation Wasp from the mind of Chris Huggett, progenitor of the OSCar synth. This one eschews the awful molded-plastic case of the original Wasp for a classy wood chassis but keeps the touch-sensitive keyboard. Surprisingly for something with digital components in the signal path, this is one of the warmest, phattest, dirty-ass synths I have ever heard or played.
The touch keyboard is nowhere near as bad as I feared as it is a capacitance design instead of a crappy membrane! Very easy to get bizarre glissandos and pitch sweeps. Triggering is suprisingly rather accurate. Takes a bit of getting used to, though if you’ve never played a touchplate or capacitance keyboard.
I had to apply a bit of TLC before this one sounded very good, it wasn’t in too bad shape for around 27 years old. A little touch-up on the woodwork…It was a little dinged-up when I got it. Also, it needed some interior work with a soldering iron to get it back to “new” condition electronically – one leg of a cap had come loose from the board, some pots needed serious cleaning and I had to re-mount and re-solder a footage selector switch that had cold solder joints, causing Osc 2 to drop out occasionally. Physically its pretty solid now. I imagine the build quality of the first-gen plastic jobbies was rather “iffy”, at least people have said so…I think I was very lucky to get a post-EDP model.
There’s quite a lot of knobbage for such a “simple” two-oscillator mono…what a terribly underrated and underestimated monster! I would put it up against just about any other 2-osc mono of its day. The filter really is something else and the modulation capabilities aren’t bad – much better than say a Moog Rogue, Prodigy or Roland SH-101, ARP Solus, etc. If you decide you can’t stand the charming capacitance keyboard, Kenton Electronics makes the Pro-KADI which acts as a MIDI-to-Wasp converter. I think people might be suprised when they hear these MP3s, regardless of my obnoxious noodling:
Wasp1.mp3 , Wasp2.mp3 , Wasp3.mp3 , Wasp4.mp3
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