#24

My second or third semi-modular synth was the SV-1, which is still the only PM device I have as yet, but I’m looking forward to the return of the Voltage Lab. The SV-1 sounds immense too, and I have learned a lot through patching it.

1 Like
#25

I really was a fan of the Double Helix, and regret having sold mine (back when I tried to replace a bunch of gear with an ER-301). It had some weird crosstalk, a couple of odd design decisions (such as no sync) and, let’s generously call it “nonlinear behavior” – but frankly that just added to its charm. It sounded gorgeous.

If I’d had a case with a more robust power supply at the time, I might have gotten a second one.

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#26

I have only owned the SV-1 but it was my gateway into modular. I still use it a lot for things like S+H and some FM. Learned so much on this thing. Would love to support them more, I might need to start looking into their modules.

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#27

i’m big fan of the Big Ol Knob panel interfaces too

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#28

I really want a Voltage Lab in the Blackbox format as they have pictured/described on their website.
Did that product ever exist?
Will it ever exist?
Is it just on the website as some sort of tease?

(I’ve only recently returned to synth-land after a hiatus, of sorts)

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#29

yes please to a more adventurous direction. I have a feeling the main engineer is down:

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#30

Yes, they did end up making a black box version, they still pop up fairly regularly on reverb, though I think production may have halted while they’re working on the new iteration of the VRL.

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#31

VRL 2 is in the pipeline, but there’s a bunch of new things ahead out first…
…plus covid shit… It’ll be an exciting year ahead for Pitt Mod.

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#32

Agreed about the Florist, it’s a wonderfully wonky module. Really organic and liquid sounding. Funny about the Timerunner and the original Timetable… I could never really get rhythmic patterns out of it that I found useful in my music and I never really understood how it actually worked despite Richard explaining it to me multiple times.

#33

Ya, the Voltage Influenced LFO
It was Richard’s first module and was essentially an accident along the way of trying to develope a VC LFO, but it sort of works backwards in a great way. That was my idea for the Chain Reactor, 2 VILFOs with 2 simple supporting LFOs. The behavior of that circuit is a central element of my modulation tool box.

#34

Yes, the Voltage Lab Black Box was an option of the original kickstarter campaign. Not sure of the status of a stand alone for the VL2.
It’s going to be a great synth though.

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#35

I love my Binary Filter. The big freq knob is very practical on stage and the unstable mode is a load of fun.

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#36

I have their VC Bend. Odd module, even PM couldn’t quite explain how it works!

I’ve thought about maybe selling it but it’s really rare and every now and then I get some interesting stuff out of it…

Does anyone have any idea what it is actually doing?

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#37

I have a VC Bend and have no idea either.
Always got some cool but unpredictable results.
From the manual:
Control Voltage Modulation

The VC Bend is designed as a way to create less than certain variations from pre-determined control voltages, like transposing / inverting a bassline into a melody or creating a 3rd envelope from 2 sources. Used at audio rate, it acts like a voltage controlled full wave rectifier. The VC Bend favours ‘esoteric’ applications over precision. More often than not the output voltage will not resemble the input. Functionally, the VC Bend sits somewhere between a sample and hold and a quantizer module. However, the type of modulation produced is completely unique to the VC Bend.

The VC Bend takes a bipolar (positive or negative) control voltage input and modulates it by the amount of the CV Input in relation to the Internal Voltage Reference. The output is a voltage which is always above 0V, the direction (moving with or away from the input) of which can be altered with an external voltage.

Features:

Voltage Controlled Control Voltage Bender

Full Wave Rectifier - The output is always a positive voltage. Converts a bi-polar input voltage (generally +/-5V) into a uni-polar output voltage (0-10V).

CV Amplifier. Both IN and CV inputs have attenuverted knobs to control polarity and gain (2X positive and negative gain).
:confused:

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#38

Yeah, pretty cryptic!

I need to get an oscilloscope I think!

Edit: Since the output is rectified and thus only positive cv, perhaps I should try feeding that into my uO_c set to Quantermain quantizer

If I feed the original input to VC Bend info another channel of Quantermain, maybe it will give me two related melodic lines …

Will try it and report back.

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#39

Pleas do let me know what you find, I pretty much mostly used it for audio processing.

#40

Timerunner really “came alive” for me when part of a system for control signal generation with modules like Branches (get more destinations, logic self-patching), Batumi (tempo-sync’d squares for toggling the logic), Telephone Game (advancing the ASR at non-regular intervals), Marbles (contrasting pattern generation), (also all of these let me do various clock div/mult operations). It’s a very immediate module and while an obvious application is “patch out to 4 percussion hits” that wasn’t my immediate interest in it (which was "something to provide some general timing coordination).

2 Likes
#41

OK wow, sounds a bit over my head…haha

#42

It definitely creates an alternate cv melody, which may be useful if kept under reasonable control…

For audio processing, it’s basically a fuzzbox!

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#43

I have the Lifeforms SV-1 and think it’s a wonderful sounding piece of kit. Recently picked up a Norns so I am excited to start using them together. Their Oscillators sound so good to my ears.

2 Likes