We’ve seen some crazy music production stations over the years. but this synthesizer system may just take the cake. Starship One is the creation of [Marc Brasse]. At first glance, this music battle station looks like it belongs on the bridge of the Enterprise. The resemblance is not entirely unintentional. [Marc] himself says “Commander data from star Trek: The next Generation might actually (have) like(d) it if he did not have such a conservative taste in music.”

At the core of Starship One are two underappreciated synths from the 90’s. The Technics WSA1, and a Gem S3 turbo. Both were keyboards ahead of their time. The WSA1 is a modeling synth, a sound generation trend in the ’90s which sounded great, but never quite caught on. The other strike against it was that it was built by Technics, who had a track record for building HiFi equipment and home keyboards. professionals just didn’t pick it up.

The Gem S3 had a similar story — built by a company called general Music, the keyboard was a great design with extraordinary piano action, but never quite made it. [Marc] wasn’t turned off by the lineage of these two synths. In fact, he embraced them. [Marc] describes a lot more about his approach in creating the Starship One in this PDF document.

[Marc] combined these two instruments with Fatar MP1 bass pedals, a ribbon controller, and a lot more additional components than we could ever hope to name here. The frame of the synth is built from a discarded retail CD sales rack. Extruded aluminum pieces came from a sun slat curtain. just about every part was reused to build one beast of a workstation.

If you’re wondering what the odd keyboard layout is, it’s a Janko keyboard adapter [Marc] custom-made made. instead of 88 notes, there are 264 keys, set up so that every chord has the same fingering, regardless of the scale being played.

Want a lot more modulation? check out this ARM based FM synth, or this monster post of open source synths!