The Monowave was the brainchild of UK electronics designer, Paul Maddox. Paul has been designing and building synths for years as well as releasing his own unique music realised on his impressive modular creations.

Paul wanted to build (and sell) a synth the roots of which lay in the PPG. Originally intended as a monophonic bass synth, the Monowave has uses beyond that.

The Monowave was a wavetable synthesiser with 256 waves available for each of the two oscillators. Each oscillator also had a sub-oscillator. The filter was a copy of the Moog filter and there were envelopes for the filter and amplifier and a simple LFO. The panel was very 'retro' and 'traditional' with knobs for every function and a simple display. I never had the chance to use one but it looks like a tweaker's delight!

Internally, the circuitry was all analogue (except for the digital circuitry used in the oscillators)... no wimpy DSP thank you very much - this was a 'real' synth!!

Paul hand-built 25 units in total and the last one was sold at the end of 2003.

If you want to find out more about this rare little beast or Paul's various other intriguing activities, visit his website:

http://www.Modulus.Synth.net

If you like the sound of the original PPG, then you're going to love these samples from this rare instrument. The samples are mostly bass sounds that cover the bottom two octaves from C1-C3 but the 'bell' sounds cover C1-C6.