We Bet You’ve Never Seen A Pink Denture Synth

At one end of the synthesizer world, there stands commercial instruments designed for the ultimate in sound quality and performance, tailored to the needs of professional musicians. On the other, there are weird, wacky prototypes and artistic builds that aim to challenge our conception of what a synth should be. The VOC-25 by [Love Hultén] falls firmly in the latter category.

The synth is built around the Axoloti Core, a microcontroller board set up for audio experimentation. Packing stereo DACs and ADCs, and MIDI input and output, it’s the perfect base for such a project. Loaded up with vocal samples, it’s played by a keyboard in a fairly typical sense. Where things get interesting is the panel containing 25 sets of plastic teeth. The teeth open and close when the user plays the corresponding note, thanks to a solenoid. Along with the clacking sound of the machinery and pearly whites themselves, it adds quite a creepy vibe to the piece.

With its clean pastel enclosure, we can imagine this piece as the star of an avant-garde filmclip, or merely something to terrify children at a Maker Faire. It’s a fun build, to be sure. We’ve seen some other great experimental synths over the years, too – this 48 Game Boy build comes to mind. Video after the break.

18 thoughts on “We Bet You’ve Never Seen A Pink Denture Synth

        1. This is already third or fourth HAD article about some weird/funny device from some unknown person when there is better prior art with much funny video have already been made by Simone. Looks weird.
          Cancel Culture?

  1. If the Joker put on a concert, he’d play one of these.

    Well, at least I could see the Cesar Romero or Mark Hamill version playing it, or another interpretation where the Clown Prince of Crime’s “clown” part was at least as big as the “crime” aspect.

  2. Who says being perpetually under coronavirus lock-down doesn’t adversely affect mental health? Just look at that thing. Worse yet, listen to it. And did you notice, NO MASKS! This person needs to rejoin society as a positive contributor – before it’s too late.

  3. The title is particularly puzzling. Covering Hultén’s work is one thing. Not mentioning the inspiration is another. What the title does, though, is adding insult to injury.
    As others are pointing out: we enjoy Giertz’s work on hacking dentures and find it more fitting for this site as she goes through quite a bit of the problem-solving process which led to the prototype which eventually inspired Hultén. In other words, it’s not just about credit. It’s also about hacking, documenting, sharing…
    If there’s any reason you prefer not to feature Giertz’s work, I personally don’t want to know it. In that case, though, it’s a disservice to this site if you feature related work without pointing out the relation.

    This isn’t a kneejerk reaction on my part. I’ve been puzzling over that title since it appeared in my feed. Titles often matter more than the writeups in this so-called “attention economy”. And you know what they say about that economy: you need to pay attention to get attention.

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