video upload by Robots Are Red and Hive Mind Synthesis
"Hungry Thumb, by Modular 4 the Masses.
This is an 8-10hp Voltage Starved Compressor module with additional side chain and EQ.
Thank you to Modular 4 the Masses for providing the module for this video."
00:00 - Intro
00:45 - Demo with Kick only
06:58 - Full Drums
09:14 - Plucky Voice
12:00 - Full Mix
HungryThumb is a Eurorack adaptation of a compressor named Engineer's Thumb, typically built as a guitar effect pedal. Juanito built an Engineer's Thumb early in the tin can synth journey, naively replicating the 9V core of the circuit, and then didn't really know what to do with it.
Until they put an 808 kick drum through it. As a kick drum processor, this compressor shines brightly, especially when the Starve settings reduces the core circuitry voltage to 9V and lower. You can get even the purest 808-style kick drum signal, which will be mostly a sine wave, to crunch, clip, gate, fizz and fold. Do you need hardstyle kicks in your modular? This can get you there.
The Engineer's Thumb this circuit is based on uses an LM13700 OTA chip as the adjustable gain portion. These chips are a bit noisy, so an innovation of Engineer's Thumb was to put the gain section in an op amp inverting feedback loop, meaning while the compressor is set to its highest gain, the OTA is set to its lowest gain, and will theoretically be creating less noise. The theory checks out, but I'm not sure how much we Eurorack people care about noise floor.
