MATRIXSYNTH: Modded Akai Rhythm Wolf


Friday, February 24, 2017

Modded Akai Rhythm Wolf

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"The standard Wolf just has two mono outputs - one each for the drum mix and the bass synth. I added four separate outputs for the drums. Now you can feed the drums into your mixer and get a proper stereo mix, and treat each drum separately - maybe a dub echo on the snare and some flanging on the hats.
The standard Wolf just has one knob for hat decay - affecting both the closed and open hats. I added a separate knob for the open hat (the grey knob in the picture). This greatly adds to the hat flexibility.
The Howl distortion knob is ridiculous on the standard Wolf - it just turns everything into a mush of distortion, even at the low settings. I added a resistor across the pot terminals to reduce the sensitivity at low settings. It's still too harsh, but at least it can be tamed.
For complete information to buyers: by opening it up and modifying the Wolf, I have voided any warranty that might still apply.

The individual outputs are all on 3.5mm sockets. There isn't enough room for the bigger quarter inch sockets, so you will need some adapters or 3.5mm to quarter inch cables. The individual outputs are all pre- the output mixer, so they are not affected by the individual drum level pots or the Howl knob. This is actually useful, since you can turn all the drum levels but one down on the Wolf itself and get a single drum (say the Kick) going through the Howl effect. Howl actually works nicely with the Kick.

Another thing about the Howl effect - I remeber when I first fired up the Wolf how flat and lifeless the overall sound felt. I think this is one of the reasons it copped so much flak when it was first released. However, try adding just a little, little bit of Howl (which you can do with the modified knob) - suddenly the hats and snare leap into life and cut through the mix with clarity.

Another thing people complained about is that some knobs don't seem to do much at all. This is true if you use the lowest velocity level as the default (it's the green accent LED). However, the orange and red accents make the kick in particualr respond to all the knobs. Use orange as your default velocity, red as accent and green as 'de-accent' and you will get more joy from the knobs."

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