Strawberry Hill Electronics · Kansas City, Kansas

RESO‑1

A pocket analog synthesizer. One discrete sawtooth oscillator, a two‑pole resonant filter, eight brass‑contact keys, and 22.4 hours on two AA batteries, measured.¹

Voice: 1 analog VCO. No wavetable on this board, ever.
Filter: 2‑pole lowpass. Self‑oscillates above 7, on purpose.
Sequencer: 16 steps. Pattern swaps land on the downbeat.

1. Speaker on, backlight at full, eleven runs. Worst case 21.9 hours, and I am still upset about it. · Marisa

$189 first run of 500 · ships March 2027

deej the white keys up there? they work. tap one! or press A thru K

00 · THE BENCH · MARISA

One bench, two people, 500 units.

Every RESO‑1 is stuffed, reflowed, tuned by ear and signed off in a rented back room on Ann Avenue in Kansas City, Kansas. The wall behind the bench is painted warm near‑black because I cannot read an oscilloscope through glare.²

We do not start a run until every part for it is on the shelf, which is why the date on this page is March 2027 and not a season. A first run of 500 is the number two people can tune without lying to you about the schedule.

2. Behr N520‑7, two coats, roller. Deej lobbied for a mural. There is no mural.

Archival colour photograph, 1942: a factory worker in a patterned shirt bent over a bundle of copper-coloured wiring, working it with a hand tool under a single light in a near-black room.

deej looms like this are why the harness inside a reso is hand‑laced. marisa laces, i hold the light. tkk. tkk. tkk

Backdrop and plate are archival, not our bench: Jack Delano, Chicago, April 1942 (LC‑USW3‑001477‑D) and David Bransby, Burbank, June 1942 (LC‑DIG‑fsac‑1a34456), Library of Congress FSA/OWI Collection. Public domain.

01 · THE VOICE · MARISA

One oscillator, built from parts you can point at.

The core is a discrete sawtooth with hand‑matched transistors. Nothing in the signal path is a lookup table. It drifts a few cents while it warms up, under 4 by minute three,³ then settles into the tuning that old monosynths charge four figures for.

The filter is a two‑pole resonant lowpass. Above 7 on the RES knob it self‑oscillates into a clean sine you can play as a second voice. That is a feature with a slope, not a defect with an excuse.

3. Cold start at 20°C. In January on the bench it takes four minutes, and I have the log.

deej cut and res. the two knobs you wear out. no detents, so the sweep goes wowowow instead of click click click

02 · THE SEQUENCER · MARISA

Sixteen steps, on the downbeat, every time.

Punch steps in while it runs. Pattern changes queue and land on the downbeat, because a swap that lands whenever the processor is ready is not a swap, it is an accident. Swing runs 50 to 70 percent and ships set to 54.⁴

Sync in and out are 3.5mm pulse, the same standard the Volcas and Pocket Operators speak, so it sits on a crowded table without an adapter or an argument.

4. Deej set the default and hid the jumper. His position is that 50 percent feels like marching. I have stopped contesting it.

deej steps go orange when armed. hold shift and the same row turns into patterns. chka‑chka‑chka

03 · THE POCKET PART · MARISA

240 grams. Two AA batteries. 22.4 hours.

That runtime was measured with the sequencer running, the speaker on, and the backlight at full, because a spec you can only reach with headphones and the screen off is not a spec.⁵ Alkalines from the gas station work. So do rechargeables, and so does USB‑C.

The chassis is one piece of glass‑filled nylon over brass key contacts. Unit 7 has been dropped 1.2 meters onto concrete twice, from my own bench, and still holds tune. Every unit is tuned by ear on Ann Avenue before it ships, and the test sheet inside the box is signed by whoever tuned yours.

5. Eleven runs, five battery brands. Worst case 21.9 hours, best 23.1. We print the conservative number.

deej right edge: line out, headphones, sync in, sync out. all 3.5mm. plug your volca in, thoomp, they're friends now

Go on, play it.

deej these eight keys run a browser model of the real voice. same saw, same filter curve, same envelope. the hardware sounds better because it's electricity, not arithmetic. click, tap, or press A thru K. you can't break it with your ears.

CUT RES

Marisa's note: the model runs at your browser's sample rate. The hardware does not have one.

Four patches off the bench.

deej synthesized live in your browser, nothing prerecorded. the names are where i was standing.

Archival photograph, 1942: a woman at a long factory bench soldering a contact onto the end of a wire, a lit soldering iron in one hand, spools of cable and small parts spread across the bench in front of her. — deej this is the posture. shoulders down, iron light, breathe out on the joint. i recorded gravel sitting exactly like that

Specs, with units.

Archival photograph, 1942: a man in a hat standing at a control panel covered in large round and octagonal instrument dials, his back to the camera, one hand on a valve wheel. — Every number on this page was read off a bench meter, eleven times, before it was printed. · Marisa

Voice: 1 analog VCO, discrete sawtooth core, square sub‑octave divided from it
Filter: 2‑pole resonant lowpass, self‑oscillation above 7 on RES
Envelope: One knob, decay‑shaped, 20 ms to 4 s
Sequencer: 16 steps, 8 patterns, swing 50 to 70 percent
Keys: 8, brass contact, C major pentatonic by default, remappable
Connections: Line out, headphone, sync in, sync out, all 3.5 mm
Speaker: 28 mm, 84 dB SPL at 30 cm⁶
Power: 2× AA, 22.4 h measured, or USB‑C
Size: 148 × 82 × 22 mm, 240 g with batteries
Made: Assembled and tuned in Kansas City, Kansas
Warranty: Two years. Repairs happen at the bench that built it.

6. Measured in the stairwell, which is our quietest room. Deej describes this figure as "louder than that."

First run: 500 units. Ships March 2027.

$189, with $40 down to hold a place and the balance charged when your unit passes the bench. If the date slips, the email you receive will contain the actual reason, with a part number in it.

Questions first? Call or text (913) 555‑0152, weekdays 9 to 5 Central. I answer Tuesdays and Thursdays. Deej has the other days, and I apologize in advance.

Deposit: $40, refundable until your unit ships
Shipping: Free in the US, $18 flat everywhere else
In the box: RESO‑1, sync cable, the signed test sheet

deej unit numbers go out in order. 001 went to marisa's mom. she uses it as a doorstop but it's tuned