About Pittsburgh Modular

A synthesizer company located in Pittsburgh, PA USA.

Richard Nicol (Pittsburgh, PA) creator and founder of Pittsburgh Modular is building a uniquely skewed vision of modular synthesis. All of the Pittsburgh modules are handmade with the look of 1950′s science fiction laboratory equipment using bold components and unique layouts to promote interaction and experimentation. Fresh ideas in modern analog circuitry are used to create new, interesting, and strangely musical tones.

Thomas O’Connor (Port Adelaide, South Australia) An electro-entomologist & journeyman dilettante. When not planning for Year Zero or building towers of plastic skulls in his backyard he likes to unwind with a frank and open discourse on nothing with anyone who will stand still long enough & not press charges. A student of the Dérive, Trap Rap & Ghetto House he is currently searching for the philosophers stone in a unique mix of baking soda, 808 bass drums & metal film resistors, whilst admitting he is unlikely to succeed in this endevour, he maintains that this is "kinda the point"
Some of the more usefull side effects of his experiments are avaliable as practical electronics from the good folks at Pittsburgh Modular.

Michael Johnsen (Pittsburgh, PA) Instrument builder and performer Michael Johnsen was born in 1968 in Pennsylvania. Drawing on the rich American tradition of experimentation and cobbling, he has built up an integrated menagerie of devices specifically for live performance whose idiosyncratic behaviors are revealed through their complex interactions. His work is characterized by a relative lack of ideas per se, and an intense focus on observation, the way a shepherd watches sheep. The extensive patching of large numbers of devices produces teeming chirps, sudden transients and charming failure modes; embracing the dirt in pure electronics. Most of what he might have learned has come from the natural world, like watching robins run. He is particularly fond of sounds that end.

Scott Swartz (St. Louis, MO) is a musician/engineer/electronics experimenter skilled in both vacuum tube and solid state design.  He has published multiple audio design articles in magazines such as Glass Audio, Audio Xpress, and Vacuum Tube Valley, and he has created and shared many DIY effect designs that have been constructed thousands of times.  If he is not at his electronics workbench, then he can be found with a fiddle in hand or sitting behind a pedal steel guitar, preferring to mostly defer sleeping until he is dead.  At parties he enjoys witty banter on topics such as parasitic oscillation and just temperment.