Products
- Wasp
The Wasp was undoubtedly EDP's most famous product, distinctive for its black/yellow colour scheme and brittle, cheap 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 to be unreliable, unintuitive, and devoid of much of the expression present with a real keyboard. Despite these flaws, the Wasp was 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 DCO (not VCO) synth, with dual envelopes and a single, switchable (low/band/highpass) CMOS-based filter.
- Wasp Deluxe
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 DCO, 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.
- Spider
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.
- Gnat
Anthony Harrison-Griffin an independent product designer was responsible for the design and build of the Gnat, drawing on the basic design and colour scheme of the already well established Wasp. The Gnat was a single-oscillator version, but used pulse-width modulation to fatten the sound. As a result, it actually had a bigger sound than the Wasp but was less flexible.
- Caterpiller
A true, 3-octave master keyboard which could control up to four Wasps or Gnats using EDP's proprietary digital control system.
- Keytar
A "heavily modded Wasp that was built into a guitar form" which, although prototyped, never went into production.
Read more about this topic: Electronic Dream Plant
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