via STG Soundlabs
The first is the new thing: the MooSonics Vanilla Envelope. It is a 1MU envelope generator and VCA based on a certain 1970s cream-coloured synthesiser. I have also settled on the knobs I'm going to use for this product line, kind of an MXR style. I think this looks better for these modules than the aluminum inlay knobs I use for the aluminum panel modules.
The Vanilla Envelope has a yellow LED here but will ship with a red one.
Currently it is only a kit with through-hole electronics. I will eventually offer an assembled version when I redesign it for SMD, which has to happen because I simply will not do production modules in through-hole any longer. This would also allow me to do two different kinds of kits. Do you have feelings about this? Let me know!
This thing is great! Minimum attack and decay times are 2.5ms and 1.5ms, maximum attack and decay times are 6 seconds and 10 seconds. This is with the current build but you can swap the timing capacitor for different times and shapes even. I played around with a few different kinds of capacitors for this, didn't like the results I was getting from electrolytics, and found I really liked using a ceramic for this which got much better results, then tweaked that value until I got a shape and response I liked.
Is that authentic? Tom told us in his Knobcon AMA that getting the best result out of a circuit required playing around with the components until you liked the way it worked, so I say "yes!"
Like the original, there is an attack knob, a decay/release knob, and a sustain knob. Unlike the original, these follow American format conventions for envelope legending. T1 is attack, T2 is decay/release, and E is sustain.
[1st oscilloscope pic below: Each block on the grid represents 500 microseconds.]
The VCA is separately addressable but the control input is normaled to the EG, so you can get sound out of this thing by just patching audio into the VCA input and output, and sending a trigger into the EG input.
Like the EG section, I tweaked the input gain on this so that it was right on the verge of OTA distortion, which I think sounds pretty cool. All of the reference designators on the PCB are identical to the original so if you really don't like what I've done you can always go back to the vintage schematic (very publicly available) and revert back.
[2nd oscilloscope pic below: Yellow is the input to the VCA and blue is the output. You can see a bit of a curve to the shape, which is the distortion of the CA3080 OTA chip.]
The second is a newer thing: The Pulse Matrix with a new front panel PCB.
It's been out of production for a couple of years because I just wasn't happy with the footprints of the original design, and last month I realised I could just make my own!
I redesigned the front panel PCB of the Pulse Matrix so that not only is it a bit easier for me to build and lets me use the jacks and hardware I prefer, but it also now connects to the Oscillator via the waveform connector so that it becomes a hard-wired pulse section for the Oscillator. If you have this thing connected to the Oscillator, the sawtooth wave is normaled to the signal input.
That may seem a bit extravagant, but is it really?
[The first few are going to be green, then I'll be moving to a black or purple PCB and the new mainboards will also be black. Is it because I'm Irish? Yeah sure, totally.]
The only downside is that sometimes running the Pulse Matrix off of the triangle is preferable, and even allows for phase modulation of the suboctaves via the control input, but most people are used to pulse conversion from a sawtooth so I selected that. You can still defeat this by patching it directly, so I don't see a problem.
I am Irish-American in heritage, like Patrick McGoohan (the creator of my favourite TV series: The Prisoner), so I thought it would be appropriate to celebrate my genes and my memes by offering a St Patrick's Day sale!
If you can read this, you are free to purchase 2 Vanilla Envelope Kits at a $50 savings ($250 total) or the Pulse Matrix at the original price of $215 (I had to raise the price on this to $250).
Click here for the sale page!
If you're not interested in either of these things, just hit the reply button and ask if you want 10% off and free domestic US shipping on anything else I can take orders for. This sale will last for one week after St Patrick's Day.
Thank you and have a great St Patrick's Day!
Some of you may have noticed I've been acquired by muSonics, a rite of passage for any small-town modular synthesiser company. I'll write more about that in the next newsletter. In the meantime you may want to check out the new muSonics 902 VCA over at Noisebug. muSonics is finally deprecating their Telex machine and building a webzone in an effort to modernise, so right now that's the best place to read up on it.
Also if you made it this far, and you don't know what St Patrick's Day should be all about, I encourage you to go over to the Wikipedia entry for Saint Patrick. I'm sure it's at least one-quarter accurate, but enough to get a general idea."
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