I’ve wound up buying built units rather than kits. My favorite toys besides the MicroBrute are:
– Soulsby Atmegatron. Crazy 8-bit hackable instrument with several available firmware synths. There’s also a miniAtmegatron kit to plug into an Arduino Uno, though it’s a bit more limited in features.
– Olegtron* 4060. It’s basically a 4060 oscillator/divider, and mini-patchboard and a bagful of electronic parts to create patches in the most low-level way possible. You can use it to generate audio, clock other synths, send CV, whatever. You can source the parts elsewhere and breadboard it for much less if you’re a hardware hacker; it’s really mostly a convenience package. I like it for having a completely different approach than any other synth, and usually will wind up stumbling into a sequence or drone I like, resampling it in Maschine and starting from there.
