Acid Solder Club is a DIY electronics and synth-building space started in 2019 by Veerle. Despite the name, it isn’t a closed members’ “club”, but refers more to the getting together with whoever joins a workshop or event for that day.
One time it’s a group of total beginners, another time it’s seasoned synth builders, musicians, engineers, or curious hobbyists. Each event is its own temporary community where people learn, solder, and experiment side by side.
“Acid Solder Club as a name can be confusing sometimes; It’s the workspace and studio in Utrecht, it’s a name for events organised there, and it’s Veerle’s personal inventions and education programmes.
I like to think of it as a place where you can visit just like going to yoga or a book club, you can come and learn about electronics, solder some random things together, meet new like minded people and play around with synthesisers and stuff you’ve never seen or heard before.”
Workshops and events can be anything from building DIY synthesiser modules, guitar pedals, noise boxes, lo-fi microphones or robotics. From DIY MIDI controllers to hacking toys, bending circuits, and making weird machines that sometimes can’t be controlled at all!
Veerle’s way of teaching electronics always revolves around learn by doing, share together with each other what you know and what fascinates you, and leave the day with something that makes sound, blinks, bleeps (or at least with some smoke), and continue your DIY journey ahead.
Why?
Acid Solder Club is a place where you can learn electronics this way, it’s not a makerspace, nor a hackerspace, nor a fablab, it really has it’s own character and from the moment you step in you feel that. A lot of electronic workspaces are hidden within walls of educational institutes, have memberships, and/or are not always accessible by other means.
A lot of Dutch cultural subsidies are very focused towards new digital media, AI art, Immersive experiences, and lot’s of new and upcoming technologies, but even in order to make those projects, you will inevitably have to deal with some form of basic electronics and/or soldering, even if it is to repair and maintain your setup, and understand what is doing what, and why.
Acid Solder Club’s main intent is to be self-sustaining by organising workshops, creating education programmes on various schools and institutions, selling and developing DIY KITS, repairing devices and reselling them, electronic advice and personal coaching etc. The workspace and studio are not connected to any multi-year subsidy, although each year there’s some applications going out for some specific projects to help realise them.
Community
This means people coming to events and workshops really is making this place work and thrive the way it has been doing for the past 5 years! And without any fear of multi-year subsidies failing and having to quit, it gives the full freedom to organise whatever events come into mind on a specific day. Acid Solder Club comes from the heart, it’s run by mostly Veerle with the help of volunteers, community members jumping in when soldering and studio-rebuilding help is needed, occasional donators and some subsidised small projects here and there!
The community is expanding each year, in 2025, we had 415 joining locally hosted events and via Acid Solder Club soldering workshops at festivals. We are working towards some new ideas for online community platforms such as a Discord or Forum and/or Patreon throughout the course of 2026.
Veerle: It’s not about formal lessons or lectures about electronics, but about picking up a soldering iron, trying things out, making mistakes, and laughing when it suddenly works. You can always take a deep dive into how schematics and electronics work, but you can choose how far you want to dive.
SOUND STUDIO AND SYNTH REPAIRS by Veerle
Veerle also repairs and renovates old machines and obscure devices such as electronic organs, old test equipment, broken vintage synths and musical devices, and bringing them back to life (sometimes better then other times),but with the main intention, that they can be played at open days and studio sessions by a broader audience.
This way the past stays part of the present, and technology that might have ended up in the trash keeps making noises and hopefully kickstarts some new makers with a fascination for soldering their own musical instruments.
Veerle works on various archival repair and restoration projects such as STEIM Zwarte Dozen Systeem. (acquired in 2023) that she restores in the workshop bit by bit, and working on maintaining the legacy of vintage audio equipment, electronic organs and other Dutch-heritage sound machines and apparatus with Studio RE:VIVE situated in the Instituut van Beeld en Geluid in Hilversum.
Acid Solder Club is about the smell of solder, the buzz and energy of a circuit finally working, and the excitement and self reliance that comes from creating something with your own hands… for a day, or maybe for much longer.
Join the DIY revolution! Let’s get soldering!
Find upcoming events on the calendar page, and for some video’s about things in the workshop checkout the ASC YouTube channel.
