wel, the second Vermona synth getting some attention on this blog. It’s pretty simple to tell what it is. 4 analogue monosynths packed in a single (pretty high) 19″inch rack. They can be configured in more or less any way you chose (unison, dual, fm, 4xmono, poly).  Each synth on its own is a simple yet adequate thing, with 1osc, 1Lfo, 1filter, 1env, all in all, nothing special there (all the gritty detailed specs you need can be found here). The friendly guys at Vermona even tossed in some insert points, analogue input per synth and separate outputs giving the whole thing a bit of a semi-modular feel. You could, if you’d want to, create such an insane filterbank with it, you’ll be tweaking knobs till the cows come home (whether it will result in something useful is not yet known, researchers are still fiddling with the settings, to get the sound ‘just’ right .. ) .. in short.. nice toy.

So. What does it sound like. well, it sounds like an east German synth. It has quite a characteristic sound of it’s own, and isn’t a copy of anything else on the market, nor does it pretends to be one. I only can applaud such an approach, as the current trend of ‘emulating the old famous synths’ is getting a bit long in the tooth. It comes close to TB like sounds sometimes, but apart from that, you’re done with the famous comparisons. There are plenty of sound demo’s to be found on their website ( or here ), which should give you some kind of idea about what it’s capable of. Take notice though that, unlike you’ll hear in the demo’s on their site, it’s bare bones analogue, there are no fancy waveforms or chorus/reverb thingies going on to fatten up the sound. In fact,  the clean osc doesn’t provide very rich overtones. It’s a pretty dry square and sawtooth oscillator affair. Nothing wrong with that, but, even with 4 oscillators I never could make a convincing pad/string like sound. That could just be me though. Such oscillator tones does provide a good base for more straightforward sounds (basses, leads, etc..), in which the perfourmer feels more comfortable.

It’s all a pretty raving ’till now, .. synth with character, nice sound, plenty of routing options. But what’s wrong with it? Well there are 2 major issues with it..

1. Tuning… This is the most annoying thing about the vermona. The tune button ranges from -13 to +13 (26 semitones), the button has approx 300° of travel, making the semitones lying 11° apart. That’s not a lot, I am used to having a fine detune control with such a travel for a single tone! And a second one for semitones. The best has yet to come though, it’s a continuous dial? It has ‘NO’ little dent in the middle position (just a begin and end), which means, good luck guessing where the right pitch is. So, you’ll end up spending a lot of time tuning the machine, a process which involves a steady hand, some waste of time, a pair of ears (or an electric chromatic tuner). When you’re all done and tuned up, you’ll hope to never need to touch that control again. Which brings us seamlessly to point 2.

2. The controls. It’s a nice looking machine, with nice big chrome knobs. In fact, 72 of those nice big chrome knobs, nicely, evenly horizontally and vertically spaced across the front panel. This makes for a nice look, but a terrible user experience. There is no visual grouping per synth, let alone per function on a given synth, other then a small black printed line on the front panel. This makes sure you’ll screw up your finely crafted sound often, simply by turning the wrong control by accident. Given the average studio lighting is pretty dark to begin with, this happens a lot. Vermona fixed this issue by using color coded knobs on their new models :D (we took some markers to ours (see pic)). This doesn’t completely fixes the problem though but, at least it does provide some form of visual grouping of the UI.

ohw.. and there might be a small 3th issue. It has absolutely no way to store your sounds. none.. well, apart from a pdf you can print and put marks on, but that doesn’t really count .. for a synth in this price range it should include at least a basic way to store synth settings these days IMHO. Ok, we all have near unlimited digital recording time these days, so it’s not a BIG problem,  but I consider it a basic feature that, apart from modulars, should be on any synth.

Now that’s out of the way, what’s there to be liked about the machine. Midi implementation is as simple as it gets without a display, in fact, everything is pretty straightforward. No steep learning curve, yet enough possibilities to keep you interested.  The poly mode is a really nice and can be a great source for weird effect. It works simply by assigning every note you play to a new channel, after the 4th it starts back at 1. If you set the 4 synths exactlly the same, you kinda have an analogue polyphonic synth. The best fun, off course, is to be had when you set the 4 sounds to different timbres (I’ve been told the korg mono/poly could do the same thing). In fact, the whole routing and 4 times a synth thing is well thought out, well implemented and pretty much everything works as expected. Ideal machinery for knob tweakers and cable pluggers.

Conclusion.. is this a good synth? well, that’s kinda subjective off course. It’s good if you’re in search of that kind of sound palette or want something a bit more experimental, although at this price you already can have a big piece of a real modular going. These kind of synths are simply not for everyone, but if you’re into the market of a semi-modular analogue synth, and can live with the tuning issues, it’s worth a look. However, the lack of decent tuning, no ram and confusing UI makes this, unlike it’s name, not a performer synth. I wouldn’t take this with me in a live situation, or any other kind of performance. It’s something for in the studio, sitting in a rack whiching it was a real modular.