The EDP Wasp synthesiser / Spider sequencer

Manufactured in 1978, The Wasp was undoubtedly EDP’s most famous product, distinctive for its black/yellow colour scheme. It was notorious for its lack of a mechanical keyboard; instead, it used flat conductive copper plates, hidden under a silk-screened vinyl sticker. The Wasp was fairly advanced technologically – it was one of the first commercially available synthesisers to adopt digital technology, which at the time was just beginning to become a standard. It also utilised a proprietary system for connecting several Wasps together, pre-dating the invention of MIDI by several years. The digital interface should not be confused with MIDI however, even though similar DIN plugs are utilised (7-pin DIN instead of the 5-pin DIN which MIDI standardized to.

All in all, it’s nifty technology for 1978, but in reality, due to the keyboard, they are a bit difficult to play – best sampled once a unique sound has been created. There’s also a little speaker built-in to the synth.

EDP Spider

A 252-step digital sequencer (most analogue sequencers at the time had 8 or 16 steps, built in the same style as the standard wasp, outputting both LINK (to drive EDP products) and CV/gate information for use with standard analogue synths.

Architecturally, the wasp is dual DCO (not VCO), with dual envelopes and a single, switchable (low/band/highpass) CMOS-based filter. Digital circuitry was built by Chris Huggett, who also designed the OSCAR. The filter is a 12dB/oct. made of digital inverters “working as OP amps” – that is the main reason for its very special sound. 12dB/oct multimode filters and an LFO (here it is a “modulation OSC”).

“I bought the Wasp & Spider privately in London in the early 80s. I’d used one earlier on a pre-Mode recording and when it became available, I snapped it up. It has a unique sound all of its own and works in such a user-friendly way, that you can get lost just fiddling around creating literally endless possibilities. I remember the original sales blurb said that it was indestructible and boasted that you could throw it from the roof of a large office block and it would still work at the end of it. I never tried that you’ll be pleased to hear. This Wasp was later used on various DM records, most notably for the Aggro mix of ‘Never Let Me Down’ to create the famous bass sequencer part. I think we used the Wasp and Spider sequencer and then probably sampled the result, as it isn’t midi controllable. We may have been able to sequence it using cv/gate. I can’t quite remember.”