Rakit Drum Synth

Published on May 11, 2017 Rakit

"Rakit Drum Synth Kit based on the Amdek PCK-100 & Boss PC-2.

A DIY drum synth that is made almost entirely from PCBs and has only 2 wires making for a tidy build. Nicely interfaces with sequencers and other trigger/CV sources."

via www.rakits.co.uk:

"Available as a kit or a fully made unit, the Rakit Drum Synth is based on the (now rare) Boss PC-2/AMDEK PCK-100 percussion synthesizer. The sounds produced by the synth are not limited to what you would expect to associate with drum sounds and can vary from big bass drums to tapping on glass to UFO space drum-wobbly things! Not only does this Drum Synth do sonic justice to the original but we have also put our own spin on it with extra modifications including:

* Attack on/off
* VCO & LFO wave shape selection
* Pitch CV input

"The synth is triggered by a piezo disc which is sensitive to how hard you tap the top panel giving subtle differences in the envelope. The sounds are generated by a VCO optionally modulated by a frequency sweep, LFO, Pitch CV or all three. There is a simple envelope generator with a fixed fast attack for punchy percussive envelopes and variable decay for super short to really long decays (5 seconds+).

Controls:

VCO/LFO SHAPE
Select triangle or square wave.

ATTACK
Mimics the sound of a drumstick hitting a skin. The degree to which it is noticeable is dependent on the other settings.

SENS
Sets the sensitivity of the trigger/piezo input.

RATE
Controls the frequency of the LFO. Approx 2Hz to 400Hz

PITCH
Controls the pitch (frequency) of the VCO. Approx 30Hz to 3.5kHz

DEPTH
Controls the amount of LFO applied to the VCO.

DECAY
Sets the decay time from short and punchy (50ms) to lingering (5 seconds+)

SWEEP
Controls the amount of frequency sweep applied to the VCO.
Select the direction of the frequency sweep."