Mephisto prototype, courtesy of Amazona.de
A polyphonic analog synthesizer designed by Vermona circa 2000. The company exhibited a prototype at trade shows in 2000 and 2001, but it never went into production. It was to have had six voices, with three VCOs, a high pass VCF and a low pass VCF per voice. Vermona advertised that the audio path would be all analog and implemented with all discrete components -- no integrated circuits. Both a version with a keyboard, and a tabletop version, are known to have been shown and photographed.
Original Concept: VEB Elektronik[]
The original idea for the Mephisto began with designer Bernd Haller, in the early 1980s. Haller worked for the Soviet-era VEB Elektronik in what was then East Germany, behind the Iron Curtain. He had been cleared to design a monophonic synth by VEB management (which became the original Vermona Synthesizer) in 1983, but did not get clearance at the time to work on a polyphonic design. Haller knew that the market at the time was going towards polyphonic synths, and he wanted a design that VEB could sell in the West, and bring hard currency to East Germany.
The management clearance finally came in 1988. Haller and his group dubbed it Project Mephisto (a name which proved to be unfortunately prophetic). The group had not gotten very far when the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, almost immediately bankrupting VEB (and most other East German companies). Haller and two associates launched HDB Audio, but the company needed immediate income to survive, and so the Mephisto project was put on the back burner.
New Concept: High-End Analog[]
By about 1997, HDB had enough money banked to resume work on the Mephisto. However, at that time, the synth market was very digital-centric. Haller reasoned that the proper approach was to build a high-end analog polyphonic synth that would attract well-heeled customers. Accordingly, the company spec'ed out a voice architecture with each voice having three VCOs producing a variety of waveforms, a multimode VCF, two envelope generators, two LFOs, ring modulators, and effects, with all functional blocks having a large number of options. The audio path was entirely analog, although there were digital circuits keeping the VCOs in tune.
But the Mephisto's most radical (and expensive) feature was its particular implementation of the patch memory and recall function. The patch memory held 100 patches, with an additional 100 accessible from a memory card. However, unlike the conventional implementation of patch memory, in which a D/A converter drives sample and hold circuits to set analog patch parameters, the knobs on the Mephisto directly drove the parameters they controlled. When the user save a patch to memory, a digital circuit scanned all of the knobs and recorded their current values. On recall, the digital circuits commanded motors that recalled the patch by physically rotating the knobs to the correct positions. Thus, the knobs always indicated the actual values of the parameters they controlled.
The project stretched HDB's finances. For funding, they formed a partnership with Michael Thorpe and his company Touched By Sound. The Mephisto was first publicly revealed in 1999, and units shown at the Muskimesse show in 2000. The concept of the motor-driven knobs created a sensation.
Trade Shows and Shenanigans[]
At Musikmesse, reviewers who got to play the Mephisto were impressed by the possibilities, but noted that many functions were not working. In an Amazona,de article published in 2013, editor Peter Grandl noted that at the show, Amazona had hired a journalist to test the Mephisto and write a review. The report that Amazona received was very positive. There was one problem: nearly all of it was a lie. Most of the functions the journalist claimed to have tested were not actually available in the prototype at that time. It turned out that the journalist was an HDB employee.
Another problem was that the Mephisto was billed as a Touched By Sound product, and Thorpe was billed as its inventor. This may have created friction between Thorpe and the HDB principals, as the partnership dissolved not too long after.
The Mephisto is Not Released[]
Vermona continued to work on the concept for several years after the last public showing in 2001. It is unclear when they stopped work on it; rumors continued to circulate for a number of years afterward. A commenter to the Mephisto review at Vintage Synth Explorer claims to have contacted Vermona in 2012 and was told that they were no longer working on it at that time. Amazona interviewed Thomas Haller, son of Bernd Haller, in 2013, and he stated that HDB was no longer working on the project. One of the stated reasons was parts obsolescence; a significant redesign would be needed for parts substitutions.
It is known that Vermona struggled to keep the build cost to a reasonable value; some reports in the 2004 timeframe had the suggested list price being at $7000 US, which would have been far higher than the more capable Alesis Andromeda, not to mention the inexpensive virtual analog synths that were beginning to appear at the time. Possibly, with the all-discrete audio circuitry and the motorized knobs, Vermona was unable to get the cost down enough to make it marketable. The motorized-knob recall would have been difficult to get to work accurately, such that patches were recalled reliably. A number of very capable analog polysynths have been released in the past decade, against which the Mephisto would need to compete. In fact, HDB released its own four-voice polysynth, the Perfourmer, introduced in 2002.
In a way, the Mephisto story illustrates the difficulty in creating a good user interface for a synth with patch memory. It is quite desirable to have controls that indicate the actual values of their parameters at all times. Several other approaches have been tried, but to date, no one has devised a solution that works well and can be implemented at a reasonable cost.