I am a huge fan on Thomas Henry's work, and I've built several of his projects from the "VCO Chip Cookbook" including the XRVCO (which is also included in this book). I picked this one up mostly from a desire to support Thomas' work, which he shares quite freely with the DIY community.

But I have to agree with the first review that for the money, "An Analog Synthesizer for the 21st Century" is fairly slim. What I appreciated most about the "VCO Chip Cookbook" was the accompanying text which explained what the circuit did and how it worked, as well as the substantial possibilities for modifying the circuits in the same chapters. These kind of luxuries are missing here, as this book contains only schematics and parts lists.

There are some very useful and unique schematics in here, like the VC Phase Shifter and a very unusual-looking LFO, which I look forward to laying out and building. But for 20 bucks or 16 Euros, the average consumer might expect a bit more than a collection of bare schematics. DIY beginners would be better steered towards "The VCO Chip Cookbook" (which might be a very good option to put in print at Lulu since I'm not sure if SMS Electronics has kept it in print or not), or to the Electro-Music online forum, where ready-to-etch PCB art for several of Thomas' designs (although not all the ones in this book) can be found in the "Thomas Henry designs" section.

Well, it is clearly stated that this is a collection of new schematics by Thomas Henry, and is NOT a detailed step-by-step manual like his other books. It also clearly states that this is a book for more advanced DIY enthusiasts. If you bought this book thinking it was going to be anything other than that, we apologize, but no deception was intended. Also, these schematics are NOT freely available on the internet. There are similar designs floating around the web, but this is a collection of circuits that have specifically been created for this book, and represent Thomas Henry's most advanced analog circuits to date. There are very unique circuits in this book that you won't find in other places. We have hundreds of customers who enjoy this book, but it is clearly not for everyone, especially beginners. Some questions like "how fast are the envelopes" can easily be answered by breadboarding the circuit and testing it. Even then, changing one capacitor in that ciruit will allow you to make the envelopes faster or slower to suit your tastes.

Finally, yes, a royalty payment does go to Thomas. He worked very hard on this collection, and deserves to be compensated for that effort. The price of the book is based on the value of the content, and the blank pages do not make it more expensive - they were put in there so that the schematics lie open for the best viewing on a workbench. As far as the PCB layouts, the vast majority of DIY electronics books don't include PCB artwork, so I'm not quite sure why you are complaining about this. Magic Smoke sells PCBs for some of the circuits in the book, and there are a few electronic music forums (most notably electro-music.com) where people have posted some PCB artwork, but creating the PCBs is a skill you will need for many of the "freely available" circuits in the internet.

In the end, if you are still truly unhappy with this book, contact us at magsmoke@gmail.com, arrange to send back the book and we'll gladly issue you a refund. Thanks.