I actually believe, like or loathe ms. Perry, firework is a fantastically constructed pop song..

The Pluginboutique <http://www.pluginboutique.com> )  is a brand new venture from the team atLoopmasters <http://www.loopmasters.com> )  which is dedicated to selling Instruments, Effects and Studio Tools from leading music software companies worldwide. It is one of the very first sites to offer this service all in one place.

The website was designed from the ground up to provide a custom solution to sell downloadable products such as Soft Synths, Music Plugins, Studio Effects and Synth Presets – and launches with some great names already involved including Fxpansion, Ohm Force, Flux, PSP, D16, Sinevibes, Waves, Sonic Charge and G-Sonique alongside many others.

The website features product ratings, instant download and authorisation, a service to ensure all your plugins are up to date, one login to see all your plugins from different manufacturers, free plugins, trial versions, and a virtual cash scheme which rewards you with each purchase.

Matt Pelling, Director comments “With such a fantastic amount of Digital Music Software currently available, we felt we could use our experience and knowledge in this sector to create a great looking website where all the best products could be easily compared, so producers can research, purchase and download the best audio plugins for their projects, and start using them immediately”.

As an introductory offer all first time purchasers at  <http://www.pluginboutique.com>   will get a Free Sample CD from Loopmasters sent to them. Plus until the end of May every additional £100 you spend entitles you toanother free Sample CD. 
To claim your free samples simply leave a comment on the Pluginboutique facebook page <http://www.facebook.com/pages/Plugin-Boutique/228032207257761>  with your order number and the type of music you produce – your mystery sample CD/s will arrive in the post!

Being tight I went for the micro kit which was very good value at about £30 and included the circuit board and all of on baord components.  There is facility to add knobs and switchees, but these are not included with this particular kit.

The lack of controls are not a problem because you can control all of the functions using midi CCs.

The kit went together very well, the instructions were very good and the construction tutorial on the web-site was very helpful.

Best of all it worked first time.. The sounds it produced were pretty good, certainly worthy of a £30 project kit..

So.... flushed with my success I decided to house it in a box and add the appropriate controls (8 knobs and 8 switches) and here the problems began..

Firstly the total cost of the project now headed toards the £60 mark and would have been even more if I'd used a proper project box (to save money I used a plastic Feroro Rocher box!) Furthermore my crappy soldering let me down ths time and the synth would only issue forth harsh squeaks and distortion.

This started me thinking about the value for money aspect of the whole project.. So far it has cost me about £60, in parallel with this I have recently been buying second hand synths on Ebay for amounts around that figure and these second hand items offer sonic abilities and flexability way better than Meeblip (with all due respect)

In conclusion if you enjoy the fact that you have made the synth yourself or have a desire to hack the firmware (which is actively encouraged) then Meeblip is a great idea.. If you are just looking for a good value way to get into synthesis then Ebay may be your better option..

 So here it is...

Apologies for the clumsy playing, I will do a better video soon.

Studio all but finished, Using an AMT-8 for the MIDI but needing to route it using Reaper through the mac as there are no windows 7 drivers, shame. Built the Rack myself and am quite pleased with how its filling up, just got a Yamaha TG55 to put in it. Eagle eyed amongst you will spot that the Casio HT6000 has been replaced with an Alesis QS6, The QS6 is a terrific sounding synth, not sure why more was made of it in its day..

Very self-indulgent, I know but I thought it might be fun to build up a little gallery of its progress. At the moment it is very much a case of Watch this space...

However I have to fit the following into here:

Synths & Keyboards:

• Casio WK3000
• Hohner HS2
• Casio HT6000
• Casiotone 1000P
• Casiotone 201
• Casio VZ8m
• Casio GZ50 m (look, I like Casios, OK?)
• Novation A Station
• Korg M3R
• Korg Prophecy
• Korg NS5R (with 50XG daughterboard)

Effects:

• Midiverb 3
• Various Behringer pedals
• Audio Patchbays

Recording Gear:

• 4 track Teac Reel to Reel
• Tascam Portastudio (only using it as a submixer, really)
• Tascam US428 USB control surface and MIDI, Audio interface

Computing:

• PC (x2)
• Mac Mini
• I will probably add another PC running XP as a host for my SW100XG card and Yamaha Daughterboard (DX7 without all of the background noise of the original!).

Whats Missing:

• Decent Monitoring, currently using PC speakers but I do have HI FI that I can use. Cannot stretch to proper Monitors
• A good Midi Patch panel, all the ones I've seen on ebay are going for too much for me.
• Mic Stand, not a problem though as I don't sing!

All created using Krakli Plugs (except for the drums), namely:

• Bass: Fl3a
• Strings: S3 and StringZ2
• Brass: Rticul8 and RMXL
• Guitar: RMXL
• Lead: RMP2
• Harpsichord: Richman2
• Hi Strings: S3B

Free VST : RMXL from myVST on Vimeo.

MyVST has tons of other demos, including many Krakli synths and is a good way to check out a synth without the bother of downloading and installing it.. visit the site when you get the chance