Jasper Synth - DIY clone of the ESP Warsp Synthesizer

April 18, 2019

While searching for a DIY Synthesizer project, I discovered the MFOS webpage and the great DIY Soundlabs. Since I was searching for a complete KIT and not only PCB, I contacted Soundtronics who are offering such kits of the MFOS Synths. Unforunatly they diclined to send the kit to Qatar where I currently work and live. Therefore I continued my search and found the Jasper Synth . Although also not offered as a complete kit, the building description contained a BOM and a clear description from where the required materials can be sourced, which convinced me to go ahead and order one kit. I found even a mouser BOM on muffwiggler which made the ordering process a bit simpler. However, since the BOM wasn't up-to-date and some items where missing, I'm sharing below a link to my mouser basket.

Materials required

Below are the links where you can buy to the required parts. Make sure that you get all required materials since not all items are in the Jasper mouser BOM

Jasper synth kit

Jasper BOM

My Mouser cart (including Jasper Midid and other parts)

Mouser BOM

music thing

1 x Alpha pot angled pc mount 5k lin
3 x Alpha pot angled pc mount 50k lin
1 x Alpha pot angled pc mount 50k log
2 x potentiometers 9mm 50k log
1 x potentiometer 9mm 100k log
5 x Alpha pot angled pc mount 1M log
1 x Alpha pot angled pc mount 1M rev log
3 x Alpha pot angled pc mount 1M lin
1 x Alpha Potentiometer 16mm Stereo 1M log
some PCB connector 3 pins
some PCB connector 2 pins
1 x PCB connector 8 pins

Farnell.com

27 x Cliff 19.3mm knobs and Cliff K21 caps

The Jasper Kit - ESP Warsp Synthesizer clone

The Kit arrived safely and well packed here in Qatar. The quality is very good and the yellow/black color looks great. Before starting with the actual work, I covered the keyboard with paper to avoid any scratches.

Building the Kit

After receiving my order from mouser, I was shocked about the number of bags with items. After the shock settled, I started with separating the resistors from the rest and followed the construction manual with first soldering the wire link connection and all resistors onto the PCB. Did I mention that there are a lot of resistors? No? There are a lot of resistors :-)! After 3 evenings of soldering I finished the resistor soldering stage. I don't want to go too much into the detail regarding the build process since the build manual already covers the most of it and there is no need to repeat the same here.

Some building notes

I've only three recommendations:

1. Take your time!

2. Take your time

3. Read the build instructions !

There are so many items to solder, you could easily solder something wrong and searching for the problem afterwards might not be great fun.

Wooden Case for the Jasper

First I was planning to do a wooden case for the Jasper. But since I own a 3D printer and the original Wasp cam also in a plastic case, I decided to do a 3d printed case. The STL files are available here.