Modular synth madness

I'm actually thinking of issuing kit analogue synths. There are a very few out there, ranging from very simple designs to things like MFOS ones, which are "somewhat difficult to build" due mainly to the wiring. Which is sort of a spaghetti nightmare. My brother's designed a variety of modules and I've got a few home made designs: we've got enough to do a complete synth and the main impediment of building some kind of powered enclosure seems to be solved. Two options - (1) fully normalised or (b) with patch bay, which increases the complexity of the design and therefore the cost. I'd do it with large format size knobs and quarter inch jacks, less fiddly. No keyboard, MIDI in instead. It's very difficult to buy small batches of keybeds off the few manufacturers out there, who don't even respond to e-mails. You can plug a MIDI keyboard in, so that's the way to do it, saves building a keyboard diode matrix as well.

The main problem is that people with *zero* soldering experience tend to buy kits and then complain about them not working. It's a sort of weird Dunning Kruger effect, where someone can't wire a plug but think they can somehow build an analogue synth. Dreadbox issued a number of kits on a "no technical help" involved, you buy the kit, if it works, good, if it doesn't, tough. There are a number of options - (a) panel plus PCB, source your own parts (b) panel plus PCB plus parts included and (c) pre-made enclosure. One thing which should put off amateur fiddlers (but seemingly fails to do so) is that you can't build and calibrate an analogue synth without recourse to an oscilloscope. Yet still they blunder on. 

Instruction videos on YouTube - "get this PCB out, solder these components to it in this order, test, get the next PCB out" etc. The finished synth will be superior to any kit out there on the market, obviously nothing like the modulars I build, but obviously nothing like the price. It will still be fairly expensive, though. You can't make these things for nothing, but there's the option of buying it stage by stage, ie. oscillator PCB, mixer PCB, LFO PCB.... that conditions the design but makes it more affordable. Some kit synths are pure rip offs, but it'd be "as cheap as possible whilst making a reasonable profit."

The problem of doing this is, as usual, time and money. Yes, I've got the money to do it, but it's somewhat out on a wire, same with all specialised small businesses. I'd definitely avoid Kickstarters or (god forbid) angel investors. Time is the main factor, I rarely get a weekend off work, and the day job is not something I can afford to give up to do this. Let's see how it goes.