GPT-6.1 Terra vs Claude Sonnet 5.5

Patchbay is a three-person studio in Rotterdam, dedicated to repairing vintage synthesizers and keeping them in use.

Old instruments have a way of becoming familiar: the feel of a key, the response of a filter, the particular sound a circuit makes when it’s working as it should. When something goes wrong, we take the time to understand both the fault and the instrument around it. We work carefully, preserving original parts wherever practical and making repairs with the long term in mind.

Our studio brings together a shared interest in electronics, sound and the machines that connect them. Whether a synthesizer has a stubborn key, a noisy output or has been silent for years, we’re interested in finding a way forward.

We work with musicians, collectors and anyone who wants to hear an old instrument come to life again. If you have a synth that needs attention, we’d be glad to hear about it.

Patchbay is three people in a workshop in Rotterdam, trying to keep old synthesizers alive. We repair, restore and recalibrate the instruments that shaped electronic music: Moogs and Oberheims, Rolands and Sequential Circuits, the odd temperamental Soviet oddity that someone found in an attic.

Most of what lands on our benches has been silent for years. A crackling pot, a drifting oscillator, a power supply that gave up in 1994. Some come from working musicians who need their instrument back before the next tour. Others come from people who inherited a dusty box from a parent and want to hear what it sounds like.

We work slowly and by hand. We trace faults with a scope and a schematic, source or rebuild parts when originals are gone, and change as little as we can. Every synth leaves with a note describing exactly what we did, so the next person to open it knows where we have been.

Come by, bring your synth, and stay for coffee.