Electronic Dream Plant (EDP) • Wasp
The Wasp
The Wasp is a quirky little synthesizer that, despite its toyish look is quite capable of funky analog types of sounds. It really is black and yellow too, just like a real wasp. Its most distinguishing feature is the keyboard and its awful non-moving touch keys. That's right, the flat plastic keys are only sensitive to your touch and so they are difficult and unreliable to play. There's also a little speaker built into the synth and EDP's own pre-MIDI connectors for linking only to other Wasps and EDP gear.
Under the hood however, the Wasp is a real surprise! It is actually a very early DIGITAL synth that also happens to sound great! With ANALOG filters, envelopes and controls, the Wasp offers flexible and traditional synthesis of cool bass, synth, and other useful monophonic sounds. It is used by 808 State, Dave Holmes, Vince Clarke, WhiteHouse and Add N to (X). It's designer, Chris Hugget, also designed the Oxford Synthesiser Company's OSCar Synthesizer.
The Wasp Special
Later versions of the Wasp included the Wasp Special (released 1981) which came with wood panels, a black and gold color scheme, and an internal power supply but no built-in speaker. And then there was the Wasp Deluxe (released 1979) which had all the features of the original plus a standard 3-octave keyboard, wood panels, an oscillator mixer, external audio-in, a larger speaker, and battery operation. EDP also produced a heavily modded Wasp that was built into a guitar form called the Keytar. It had a two octave keyboard and transpose and portamento buttons on the neck, only two were ever made as far as we know.
The Wasp Deluxe
The rest of EDP's wild world of synthesis includes the Spider, a 252 note step or 84 note real time digital sequencer to control the Wasp. The Caterpillar is a 3 octave master keyboard for controlling up to four Wasps connected and played polyphonically. The Gnat was a smaller single-oscillator version of the Wasp that could be linked to another Wasp to form a makeshift triple-oscillator synth playable from either keyboard (the Gnat also came in three versions similar to the standard, special and deluxe models of the Wasp).
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LOOKS SMALLER THAN HE IS
LOOKS HEAVIER THAN HE IS
LOOKS MUCH POISONOUS THAN ON ANY PICTURE
FEELS BREAKABLE WHEN YOU PLAY
SOUNDS LIKE A WONDERFUL NIGHTMARE