Mavis is Moog Inc.'s latest addition to the Werkstatt family and as such comes as a DIY kit. Now, the idea of assembling a synth before being able to play the thing might be a turn-off for some, but fear not, no previous experience of electronics is necessary here.
In fact, for the DIY-savvy synth-lovers among you, building Mavis may feel a little beneath you – it's that easy.
On unboxing its various parts, it is just a case of assembling the pre-soldered PCB with the chassis and fiddling about with some very small screws.
In the video above, we manage to do the job in a little over 12 minutes and if you take away the bit where we're babbling away to the camera, you could probably get it done in more like 10 minutes. Which, we think it's fair to say, isn't too unreasonable a task.
Let's werk
It all began with the Werkstatt-01 – actually, it started a little while earlier with Bob Moog's first product being a Theremin supplied as a kit – but the Werkstatt-01 carried on Bob's original DIY ethos as it first made an appearance Moogfest '14 as the star of the Engineering VIP workshop, where attendees could build their Werkstatt from scratch.
The production model, however, was a little easier to assemble and laid down the blueprints which Mavis has followed.
Quick jam
Of course, you'll want to hear what it sounds like. Now, as we mention in the following video, it would be rude of us not to have Mavis play with some of its stablemates in the form of the new Etherwave Theremin, alongside DFAM and with a little help from the Boss MT-2 Metal Zone.
This is by no means an exhaustive demonstration of Mavis's capabilities, but a bit of fun that can be had using the Theremin as an expressive controller.
