EDP Wasp

Electronic Dream Plant (commonly abbreviated to EDP) was a British firm which manufactured audio synthesizers during the late 1970s and early 1980s. The company was formed by musician Adrian Wagner (a descendant of the German composer Richard Wagner) and the British electronics designer Chris Huggett. Although their products are now prized by collectors for their unique sound, the company was small and their products were not particularly commercially successful. However, the Bass Station 2 synthesizer by Novation, widely available in the 2010s, shares key features with the EDP Wasp synthesizer.

The Wasp was undoubtedly EDP's most famous product, distinctive for its black/yellow colour scheme and brittle construction. It was notorious for its lack of a mechanical keyboard; instead, it used flat conductive copper plates, hidden under a silk-screened vinyl sticker. This was claimed by some to be unreliable, unintuitive, and devoid of much of the expression present with a real keyboard. Despite these flaws, the Wasp was in fact fairly advanced technologically. It was one of the first commercially available synthesisers to adopt digital technology, which at the time was just beginning to become a standard. It also utilised a proprietary system for connecting several Wasp synthesisers together, predating the invention and standardisation of MIDI by several years. The digital interface should not, however, be confused with MIDI, even though similar DIN plugs are utilised (7-pin DIN instead of the 5-pin DIN which MIDI standardized to).

Architecturally, the wasp is a dual digital oscillator synth, with dual envelopes and a single, switchable (low/band/highpass) CMOS-based filter.

The last Wasp revision was named the Deluxe. It offered virtually the same circuitry (but on a redesigned PCB) to the other two Wasps, but with the additional moving keyboard. The deluxe also featured an external audio input to its filter, and mix controls for the Oscillators, and external input levels. Rumour states that around 80 deluxes were produced before the demise of EDP.

The Deluxe commands an increased price with collectors, presumably because of its further increased rarity, and its improved playability.

A 252-step digital sequencer (most analogue sequencers at the time had 8 or 16-steps), built in the same style as the standard wasp, outputting both LINK (to drive EDP products) and CV/gate information for use with standard analogue synths.

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