A (not) short version of my electronics history:

Although i have been homebuilding electronic music devices for many years i have not spent
nearly that much time actually constructing circuits and stuff, approximately a few hours a week,
for three or four months a year, every ten years I am active in circuit building,
usually the coldest months of the year.
Analog modular synthesizers (see below) are my main interest, effects boxes being
another strong interest. In the passing years i have constructed and in some cases deconstructed
3 synthesizers, a bass guitar processor, and a bunch of fx.
Since i am not a keyboard player in the sense of traditionally structured music,
i am quite fascinated with other means of controlling my homebuilt synthesizers.
Modifying commercial equipment (that i acquire secondhand) is a path i often choose.

My interest in electronics started while i was in grade school, but I really took off
when i started making my own gadgets in 1985 when i got a job in the electronics
industry as a bench technician working for a subcontracting manufacturer. Basically they would
take contracts to build all sorts of small electronic devices such as telephone
autodialers, electronic scales, circuits for helicopters, etc. I already had a very strong
inclination for building music stuff, at this point i was playing some pretty far out,
spacey, electronic music. My first gizmo was a fuzz box, a real chunky (crap) one at that.
A (noisy) tremelo/preamp followed . The tremelo was pretty cheezy (i used a square wave
LFO to modulate a VCA!) but the fuzz/distortion was ok. After 7 months i got another
bench monkey job at a place that made telephones where i met and worked with an
Vietnamese engineer and a his team of helpers. After a while these guys were impressed
enough with my personal interest and diligence (i wasn't afraid to fry up circuits more than once
to figure out how they worked) that they started to teach me some neat tricks and some
basic engineering skills. At my bench (on company time) i designed and breadboarded a single
bit delta modulation ad/da unit that, when run at high enough clock speed could pass a decent
bandwidth audio signal. My co-technicians, immediate manager, and especially the head of engineering
were suitably impressed. No mention was made of the fact that i was supposed to be ixing failed
printed circuit boards. The head of engineering came out to the tech dept a few days later with some
chips. He said they were better quality, to try them out, and to avail myself of all of the data books
and such in the enginering library. Next i bought a few books on electronic music instrument construction.
The first (delta t horn) got me started on simple circuits, but the third one i bought,
Electronic Music Circuits by Barry Klein was the one that really helped me design and build some
very nice analog synth modules. It included a lot of reprinted Electronotes designs
(which is how i discovered EN). Eventually i got a "real" job in a US subsidiary of a Japanese key
telephone system manufacturer (still bench monkeying around.) After about 6 months i applied for
and was promoted to engineers' ass, now working directly for the Japanese engineers who designed these systems.
In this position i really got to see what's makes some complex telephone switching system circuits
work which was very much audio related and quite fascinating. Once again the engineers were very
helpful and quite interested in my circuits.

Years later when i first got on the internet the two things i looked up were natural perfumery
and DIY electronics. I discovered synthDIY mailing list which became a great source of info, ideas,
and community. That's way past history now and i rarely even seem to get enough time to solder
as many things as i can dream up.  update (2008): i now have an electronic
workshop set up in my garage. exciting new circuits are on their way (that didn't work out!)
...another update, i finally got to do some more synth circuitry between 2011-2014, i built a lot of
chaos related modulator circuits as well as a bunch of vactrol based circuits.
By this time it was easy to buy bare PCBs on the internet which significantly speeded up
development time. I rarely ever built the circuits as they were designed but it still made it easy
to realize my own variations. Unfortunately (as of 1/2026) i haven't completed my third modular synth yet.

Many of my designs are often just improvements or just add-ons to already existing circuits.
there is a plethora of published material on electronic circuits for music and noisemaking fun.
i am not much of a perfectionist but i have come to appreciate better designs, simpler solutions,
and more precise circuits over the years. Choosing to build higher quality designs in the first place i find
less need to revise already constructed modules.