Philosophy is the art of having a full belly without enough desire to sleep.
OUR PHILOSOPHY
In the process of production, important aspects are invisible. If an object is important based on its high cost, like a Ferrari, helicopters or nuclear missiles, then by having billions of cash those high cost items clearly forego importance. The amount of money an object costs can incredibly reduce or increase its value of importance.
During World War II, who cared about a single bullet? Who cared about an allies’ headphones or about Hitler’s private red telephone? Other things were important, like winning the war (or to simply survive). Nonetheless, objects are objects and the value they have is given with our imagination. If there is a something that can impact our imagination, then it is a rarity. Think of Raffaello, Pompeii, a coin from the Roman Age, a dinosaur tooth or maybe even an Oberheim Four Voice.
During that period, it was normal.
Instead the few that survived their intense pasts are heavily wanted by collectors, researchers, and art critics. Who could even imagine that one simple WW2 military radio can become the best piece in a museum that is admired and revered by tourists. Due to experiences and feelings attached to the objects of that period, things simply became “alive” and “human” after an approximated amount of time. Imagine Youtube personality stops the documentary and says something like “Look at this fucking radio. It is beautiful or not?” Whereas another guy corrects him saying “She is beautiful, or not…”
No one can tell when history will favor a particular instrument or what will become trash and powder for centuries. Can you imagine that history has its preferences, easy to see yet it goes unnoticed?
She likes handmade things, we believe.
Try to search Jörg Mager on the Internet. We are only provided with photos of him together with his beautiful creations. History was not a good friend to him, but despite the physical destructions of his pioneering creations, memory has kept the incredible charm of this inventor’s predictions and his back-from-the-future machinery alive. I’m sure that if one of those lost pieces will come out in the future. It seems quite impossible but let me dream a while. The commercial price for this machine could be very high, more than 50-100 times of the original price. I’m sure because of how much time that has passed, its uniqueness, its history.
In this cold, industrial world people profit no matter what. Social-network generated mental cages and throw-away-everything-you-can-throw-away directs and leads all our actions, even the most simple and instinctive ones. Handmade objects can make a difference.
Handmade is love yet it is hate. Not only love, not only hate, but one in the same because it is not indifference.
Indifference is a real thing that the Fordist method invented.
How much indifference is there inside an electric toothbrush or in a dishwasher? Our cars, our clothes, our entire houses.
I said to myself, “What do you want? Do you want to produce the same redundant objects? The same economic pcb with the same economic smd components; save money on the knob, giving an external power supply instead breaking my head to reduce the noise of the internal one? Do you want to propose for 1500-1800€ products that Korg or Behringer or every company except yours can give for 800€ or even less? What do you want to do? Spread programmed-to-die metal chassis worldwide or leave a mark, even a small one in music history? A case containing circuits or a chassis containing dreams?”
This is why Euterpe exists right now.
Stefano Bersanetti – anno 2017
CONSTRUCTION PHILOSOPHY
We weld every single unit by hand and solder love into each piece so even if it’s the same model, it remains unique. Imperfection is beauty. Too much precision is cold. Too many errors means it’s unusable. In medio stat virtus. We do not assemble units without a soul.
A die hard chassis and circuitry that allows you to manage a wide range of extremely dynamic audio signals, CV Gate and various kind of nuclear, or traditional, bombardment.
Open it! It’s totally safe, just un-plug from the wall socket first. We are not that kind of company that deems it “unsafe” to look inside at the circuits. Instead we urge you to take your screwdriver and take some pictures of the internal organs of your ESL. Maybe you will have something to post on your blog finally…
Are you a diy kind of person or an electronic pro? You have a great idea and want it applied to your ESL? Message us.
First, if you’re honest, then your warranty will be honored anyway.
Secondly, we can help you achieve your goal better and faster so that you’ll know what to do before something breaks.
This is something that regular more economic smd products can’t say for sure.
If you are an ESL customer you will receive a machine that has a large sound palette, both harmonically or dynamically speaking. Our machines have great ranges and can fall into dark unwanted sound places if uncaged. Our units need time to learn, to be properly managed, to bring out all the passion they have inside. We build these machines like that because we trust your intelligence. We know that you can decide when and when not, what or what else. You paid for it, so we give it to you. It’s just a matter of potential knowledge.
We passionately shoot and record the most important moments of your synthesizer unit to create an overwhelming crescendo feeling. Your Euterpe Synthesizer will have its own story before you even paid for it.
Our interfaces are relaxed and the commands are not too tight. You will not have cables scattered everywhere, especially over the knobs that will be used most frequently. You will perform with ease and find the right command without the hassle of searching for it. Technically speaking, your soul will find it.
Our machines are repairable. Yes, it’s a bit odd in this era today but we can repair any mishaps. Well, anyone who has a solder station can… Yes, it may be confusing. But we weld forever lasting machines, with lasting basal components, and infinite looking souls. No expiration dates for Euterpe’s pieces. Face it, you have no excuse: you have to play today, and tomorrow, and again…
We have a “problem“. There is more than one electrical standard in the world. In our machines, you can sometimes amplify the internal noises so that you can play with it. If you are in Europe you will play something 50Hz based; in the USA, you will have 10 more Hz. Imprecise and obsolete circuitry treats the signal badly. We want it. The orchestra concept: why pay all the violinists if I can do the same thing with only one single violin? Because it’s not the same thing. It’s the lack of precision that gives the sound the intensity you already know as “analog sound”, which injects vitality into different timbres. Digital does not sound but it will control eventually.
Why would you need a clipping led? You have your ears. You would actually really need a “suffering status” indicator when you have damamged something. If not, why should I deform your creative craving for signal disruption allowing an orange light tin youro blink in your face? You have your ears. Let them decide when to stop.
With our synthesizers, we bring an ancient, yet completely new sound palette to your studio. With our equipment, you will find something you cannot simply buy at the store.
We only weld quality, hand cleaned and tested components. We do not use components recovered from old circuits. Every vintage unit is different from the other. Due to our very limited production quantity and pristine quality of the circuitry, our synthesizers will only increase in value over time. Although it will be difficult to separate from your more familiar equipment since there is often a piece of one’s soul inside the interior, with Euterpe Synthesizers you will receive much more than what you pay for.
If you ever had the pleasure to deal with old stock components, like old carbon resistors or ceramic capacitors, you will notice that for things that age, its real value changes as well. It will drift from a nominal value to a percentage that is determined by stocking situations. The same happens to your circuitry. ESL products are easy to manage in this situation. We sometimes mount vintage stocks that present this drift and is not a problem at all because our circuitry is pure physics and there is nothing inside our machine that has to “understand”, like digital technology. So, like wood, our machines slightly change during years, but remained immortal in a sense
We ship our synthesizers with a manual that inculdes graphics. There are many stories about who will have the will to investigate and decode it. Finding pages with precious and interesting info about our synthesizers will become more and more powerful. In those pages, secrets may await but our secrets are safe because nobody reads manuals anymore.
Our machines are not free. It’s the no-compromise price. When choosing components, we choose materials that last. We use high standards to search for reliability, sturdiness, and sound performance only to mount, in which to say we would buy it for ourselves. Switches and potentiometers are part of the machine. Saving on them is not smart in the long run. When you use quality welding, you will hear it in the overall sound.
