Hy4 vs Kimi K3

Patchbay is a three-person studio in Rotterdam repairing vintage synthesizers and the odd drum machine or piece of studio equipment. We look after instruments that have survived tours, basements, and years of silence in cupboards. Our task is not to make them new, but to make them dependable while keeping the character that made them worth saving.

Every repair starts with listening: to the fault, to the owner, and to the instrument itself. From there we diagnose carefully, solder cleanly, calibrate patiently, and replace parts only when necessary. Between us we bring electronics, restoration, design, and studio experience, which keeps the work practical, unhurried, and attentive to small details. We document what we find, source components with care, and explain the work in plain language. Some jobs take an afternoon; others become long conversations with forty-year-old circuits. In each case, the goal is simple: return the machine to the hands, recordings, and rooms where it belongs.

Patchbay is a small workshop in Rotterdam where old synthesizers come back to life. We are three people — a former recording engineer, a self-taught circuit obsessive, and a classically trained pianist who fell in love with broken machines — and between us we have spent decades coaxing sound out of equipment the rest of the world gave up on.

We started Patchbay because we kept meeting the same problem: beloved instruments sitting silent in attics and studio corners, written off as unfixable. A Juno with a dead voice chip. A Prophet that drifts out of tune. A Moog that hums when it shouldn't. To us, none of these are lost causes. They are instruments with history in them, and they deserve careful hands, original parts where possible, and honest work.

Every synth that leaves our bench is played, tested, and listened to — because that is what it was made for.