Do you want a synthesizer? Go ahead, have one.

One Tuesday a month, a small crowd enters Tim Cox’s studio in the Brooklyn Navy Yard to interact with synthesizers. In one corner, a twenty-year-old visitor plugs candy-colored cables into an elaborate installation that pushes a wall of sound from nearby speakers. Nearby, a middle-aged player wearing a Mets cap turns and taps the more than 100 buttons and switches of a 40-pound instrument called the GRP A4, which is the size of a large air conditioner. At first it sounds like a spaceship, then like the ocean, then like a thumping dance floor, before settling into a sharp beep with a satisfying crunch.

“People will play something and say, ‘That’s the coolest thing I’ve ever heard in my life, and I can’t believe I made it,’” says Mr. Cox, a synth enthusiast who has seen many such “ear exercises.” perk moments,” as he calls them, during his time hosting the meetings. “If I shared this stuff with my friends, they would say it sounds like a dishwasher. But it is incredibly satisfying to create.”

Mr. Cox owns the most synths during his jam sessions. But the A4 is a loan from Synth Library NYC, a volunteer-run lending library that curates a collection of 73 synthesizers available to any New Yorker who signs up. In exchange for unlimited use of the box, whose $6,000 price tag puts it out of reach for most players, the library requires Mr. Cox to organize monthly visiting hours so others can get their hands on it.

“The immediate goal of the program is to increase access to equipment, as purchasing it in such an expensive city can be difficult,” said Heidi Sabers, a co-founder of the library who has played and produced electronic music. Heidi Sabertooth for 10 years. “But the bigger one is creating a community around the magic of these instruments.”

Founded in 2021 by Ms. Sabers and multidisciplinary artist Cy Once a month, a few dozen of them stop by a DIY warehouse in Williamsburg to pick up their supplies, which are provided by supporters or paid for by donations. Library members are on hand to answer questions and share tips.

“I see it as sharing resources for mutual aid,” said Riley Wong, who organizes the library with Ms. Sabers. “There’s the physical equipment, and then the ‘what the hell is going on?’ part. It goes so far when a friend spends twenty minutes with you to show you what a button means.

Listeners have been fascinated by these instruments since 1968, when composer Wendy Carlos released “Switched-On Bach,” which used early analog synthesizers to emulate an orchestra, albeit a swampy one. By the time Kate Bush’s synth anthem “Running Up That Hill” hit the charts in 1985, tens of thousands of Americans had digital keyboards in their bedrooms and basements. Thousands of others had drum machines and sequencers.

The demand never went away, but over the past decade dozens of new boutique manufacturers have emerged and larger companies have reissued their vintage models. The focus isn’t on all-in-one keyboard workstations, but on wonky knobs-and-switch boxes wired to convert an electrical signal into quirky sounds.

“It’s gone from very nerdy to very popular,” says Peter Pearson, who has been playing synths since the mid-1990s. “A lot of it is dance music that is exploding in popularity,” he added, combined with tantalizing gear porn videos from “synthfluencers” on social media. This widespread interest allowed Mr. Pearson opened a synth repair shop seven years ago, his base as a pro bono in-house technician at the Synth Library.

It may seem pointless to skimp on finicky, expensive hardware when computer composition programs use these types of programs Ableton can do pretty much the same thing. But software instruments, synth acolytes insist, are lifeless simulacra of tangible pleasure. “Flipping switches and turning knobs is an incredible physical feedback loop where you touch something and immediately hear the difference you’re making,” said Mx. Wong, who started playing synths just three years ago and has already started building them. “I also love that you’re not hiding behind a screen when you’re working on these things,” she added.

A computer also cannot recreate the mystical quality that some find in machines. Wes Marcarelli, a backer of Synth Library through his synthesizer company, STEM modular, draws a tarot card before firing up his gear because “playing it feels like I’m communicating with another realm,” he said. For Mónica Torres, who joined the library this year and had never played synths before, the instruments “feel synaptic, like they’re speaking to my nervous system, but also to the planets above us, the technology around us, things that are part of us and of which we are part.” The attraction is so great that on checkout days she moves from her home in Coney Island to the library storage room in Williamsburg.

With their infinite possibilities and multisensory offering, synths seem to do just that have a particular appeal to neurodivergent people. Mr. Cox, who organizes the studio meetings, has ADHD. “I get very distracted by new things, and synthesizers present my ears with things they’ve never heard before every time I use them,” he said.

Lori Napoleon, a friend of Ms. Sabers who advised her about the library, said a recent ADHD diagnosis has changed her 20-year career as a… techno DJ and producer in a clearer way light. “I now understand that I was drawn to synths because they resonate with how my mind works,” she said. “They are multimodal and haptic, and there is feedback from both audio and light, which is very engaging for my brain. And at the same time you are also sculpting and painting with an invisible, ethereal material”: electricity.

Like MX. Wong, Mrs. Napoleon builds her own instruments, often using discarded electrical equipment such as telegraph keys.

In the years since synths entered the consumer market, they have become smaller, and in most cases cheaper; a popular line of highly capable pocket-sized instruments retails for $99. Most enthusiasts suffer from a condition they call GAS: “gear acquisition syndrome,” the desire to expand your musical repertoire with an ever-expanding hardware collection . Even the first purchase is daunting, especially on a budget.

When Synth Library co-founder Cy

Synth Library is not the first to tackle this inequality. Ms. Sabers and Cy FeM Synth Laba similar project in Los Angeles that started in 2020. Both were founded and run by women and non-binary people, but unlike FeM, the New York library decided not to limit membership to a particular identity.

“There are no rules for who can join, but it is focused on BIPOC and marginalized genders,” Mx. Wong said. “I notice that in other scenes there are a lot of white guys with a lot of disposable income, while at Synth Library the emphasis is on supporting people to go as deep into this world as they want, regardless of their resource level, and paying attention to the barriers they may face in other parts of the synth community.”

The latest project is a collaboration with Voluminous Arts, a breeding ground for trans artists founded by composer and synth builder Gavilán Rayna Russom. In September, the library made a long-term loan to the Voluminous Arts studio, which also houses some of Ms. Russom’s instruments.

“I see the malleability of electronic sound as connected to larger ideas about rethinking social structures and identity,” Ms. Russom said. “The idea that a sound can be fluid, change over time and change shape parallels my trans femininity.” Transgender people have had a particular influence on synthesizers; Wendy Carlos, who introduced the sound to the masses with “Switched-On Bach,” was a trans woman.

Local collectors and manufacturers, Ms. Sabers said, quickly gathered around the library when she and Cy One was Check, a shop dedicated to modulars, the original, esoteric, mad-science form of synthesizer. When Daren Ho and Jonas Asher opened the store in 2012, there was a lot of information about playing synths online, but it was “hard to digest because it can be so technical,” Mr. Ho said. “It’s great that the library offers space for people to learn together.”

The sharing model also reminds him of the sense of community he felt growing up poor in Iowa. “My father is a Vietnamese refugee and we never owned much property, mostly borrowed from friends or from public places,” he said.

Ms Sabers said the library’s collection needs to be expanded to meet the growing skills of its members. “People want to make music with the equipment they hear is used in their favorite electronic music,” she said. “Little gadgets are nice, but members want access to the ‘good stuff’.”

Coveted pieces from larger manufacturers like Roland, Korg and Mutable Instruments are missing, as are custom modular rigs – the most requested item. Funding is also struggling to keep pace with the library’s increased demand for storage, web hosting and educational programming. “All the synths in the world don’t matter if we can’t keep our lights on,” she said.

Meanwhile, she and Mx. Wong is focused on developing more workshops for members and organizing more public events that might better spread the synth bug. She’s confident, she said, because people keep coming back — and so do the instruments. No one has disappeared in two and a half years.

“It’s a radical social fabric,” Ms. Sabers said, “and it just keeps working.”