Inkling vs Kimi K3

Patchbay is a three-person repair studio in Rotterdam dedicated to vintage synthesizers. We work on analog circuits, replace failing capacitors and resistors, calibrate unstable oscillators, and restore instruments that have been silent for years. Our bench sees early Japanese mono synths, European string machines, American polys, and large modular systems. We treat each repair as a specific problem rather than a routine job, because these machines were built differently and fail differently. The studio grew out of our own need for careful, local repairs. Over time, musicians, collectors, and producers across the Netherlands started bringing us gear they could not trust elsewhere. We open every case with the same approach: diagnose the fault properly, use appropriate parts, and test the result thoroughly. We do not apply quick fixes or ignore underlying issues. Whether your synthesizer suffers from tuning drift, dead voices, noisy outputs, or an unknown electrical fault, we are in Rotterdam to find the cause and return it to reliable working condition.

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.