MATRIXSYNTH: Distortotron - 1993 analog downsampler, bitreducer, overdrive


Sunday, May 29, 2016

Distortotron - 1993 analog downsampler, bitreducer, overdrive


Published on May 29, 2016 Bastl Instruments

"Distortotron was made in 1993 by Psybe - Svein Berge and Henrik Sundt"


"Bastl Instruments in cooperation with Mental Overdrive made a documentation of a unique piece of electronic music equipment from 1993 called Distortotron. They created a short film to trace the origins of the instrument and provided sound demos.

Distortotron is an effects processor: downsampler, bitreducer and clipping overdrive. It was made in 1993 in Norway by Svein Berge and Henrik Sundt a.k.a. PSYBE for a Tromsø based musician Per Martinsen a.k.a. Mental Overdrive. The concept for such instrument came from the need to bring back the aliasing and noise of early 80s samplers and it heavily formed the sound of Mental Overdrive’s debut album Plugged released in 1995 which became the landmark of the so called Tromsø sound. The album got re‐relased in 2016 on Prins Thomas’ label Rett I Fletta.

The Distortotron inspired Václav Peloušek of Bastl Instruments to design eurorack module called T romsø.

note: Svein Berge is NOT the guy from Röyksopp – just has the same name More information about Distortotron [link]

Mental Overdrive album Plugged from 1995 is reissued on Rett I Fletta label Reissue info: [link]

Album on bandcamp: [link]

Eurorack module Tromsø is available from Bastl Instruments"

Pics and info via Bastl Instruments:

"Distortotron is an effects processor: downsampler, bitreducer and clipping overdrive. It was made in 1993 in Norway by Svein Berge and Henrik Sundt a.k.a. PSYBE for a Tromsø based musician Per Martinsen a.k.a. Mental Overdrive. The concept for such instrument came from the need to bring back the alliassing and noise of early 80s samplers and it heavily formed the sound of Mental Overdrive’s debut album Plugged released in 1995 which became the landmark of the so called Tromsø sound. The album got re-relased in 2016 on Prins Thomas’ label Rett I Fletta. The Distortotron inspired Václav Peloušek of Bastl Instruments to design eurorack module called Tromsø.

note: Svein Berge is not the guy from Röyksopp – just has the same name.

TECHNICAL DETAILS

The potentiometers have caps made of old capacitors and the sides of the enclosure use old circuit boards as a design element.
Labels on the front panel are written in poetic Norwegian language which embodies the humor of its creators.

The Distortotron has 3 sections:

Quante-sprang and Ditto stoei control “quantum noise” – or in better words quantized noise wich emulates loss of bitdepth of the signal.
Taste-rate controls pitch of downsampling – analog sample and hold circuit with oscillator to reduce the sample rate of the signal and introduce aliasing.
Avklippings terskel and Ditto stryke control the clipping circuit with adjustable thresholds and amount of clipping.
and output volume called NIVEAU (outdated Danish word)"

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