#64

Hey all, this is my first post here. I do Buchla 100 Series recreations as Catalyst Audio. I thought I might be able to add something constructive to this dialogue.

So at this point I don’t know if there is any clear cut answer.

I can say that I think very highly of all of the people who (I know of) that currently work at Buchla USA.
I have known Eric Fox for a number of years and he has always been honest and ethical.
My understanding is that at this point most or all of the people who were involved with BEMI (and the lawsuit against Don) are gone, and if there are any left they are there as investors only with no say in day to day operations.

Buchla USA is cool with the modules that I am doing, I have talked with Eric, Joel (Buchla’s main engineer), and Mark Doty at superbooth and NAMM. We have talked about potentially working together on projects in the future. :slight_smile:

The 200 series stuff (in Buchla format) is a bit more of a grey area.
Buchla USA isn’t particularly happy about it, however I know that Eric is sympathetic to the fact that there really aren’t any other options currently if you want a 200 series system. I have heard rumors that there may be “official” 200 series modules at some point, but I don’t know more than that.

As far as ethical concerns about it - I think that is something that each user has to decide for themselves. There is (to my knowledge) nothing particularly shady happening behind the scenes. Don Buchla likely wouldn’t have wanted anyone doing these modules, simply because he didn’t see the point in rehashing old designs. (But that likely applies to even the “new” Easel produced by Buchla USA)

As far as his family and legacy goes, (again I don’t have first hand knowledge) my understanding is that both Buchla USA and the 200 series “clone” people have been in contact with Ezra Buchla, as well as some of the other more explicit “anti-clone” old school Buchla users and would be happy to have them involved, but have so far not had much interest. Maybe this will change in the future, maybe some stuff that happened in the past is still too fresh, or maybe people have just moved on.

[Edit - Ezra B contacted me in regards to this section of my post, and made it clear that he has very good reasons to not be involved with Buchla USA. If anyone has interest in understanding this better I would suggest that you contact him as he will be able to give you a much more knowledgeable response than I can.]

On a more personal note, when deciding to do the 100 Series modules, I debated about the ethics behind it for a long time and eventually decided that:
A. they wouldn’t cause any distress to Don Buchla (he had already passed on.)
B. they would not interfere with anyone else’s ability to make a living (no one else was doing 100 series at the time)
C. they had the potential to make people happy.

I talked with a number of people who’s ethics and thought process I respect, and no one I talked to could really come up with a good reason not to do them.
Of course this decision was based on my own set of values, and other people might well have come to a different conclusion.

Anyway, thats my best insight into the issue. Please don’t take any of what I have said as “big T truth” because a lot of it is just what I have heard from being around this “stuff” for a while.

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#65

Really appreciate your input here. I’m a happy owner of a Catalyst Audio 100 series set. I clarified above, but want to again be clear that I was not intending to do a sideways callout of your work on the 100 series. I intended it as an open-ended, even-handed discussion of how to engage with Buchla designs and instruments. So far the discussion has been largely constructive and positive, I think.

Again, thank you for providing context both to your own work and to the larger landscape around Buchla, ‘clones’, and the current state of BUSA.

Also, without putting any pressure on you, I very much look forward to other 100 series modules from Catalyst Audio :slight_smile: Thanks for the work you are doing in bringing these modules to more people.

#66

Also, hope you’ll stick around! It’s a nice community here :slight_smile:

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#67

I bet you Buchla, USA puts out one of the more obscure all in one synths, like the Touche. It’s a polysynth, like the Moog One. Hehe

#71

just found this, looking forward to reading it
Suzanne Ciani - Report to National Endowment

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#72

after finishing my DDRM build i decided to take the plunge with more 200r builds. got the PCBs a few days ago and I’m waiting for the big mouser order now! when done i plan to put the 248r in a suitcase with 25S, 292c, 281r, and 257.

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#73

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Finished a couple builds, they are working great! Now if I could only figure out what’s going on with my 25S…

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#74

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two more basically done! i think all i need is to replace an IC i burnt out trying to get the 25S working but both oscillators and the wave shaping portions are all working. anxious to get them all in the suitcase i’m waiting on.

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#75

Can you get four voices out of a Buchla system the size of the Skylab without cutting corners? Thinking of a techno system built around the 251e Quad Sequential Voltage Source, which looks like an interesting sequencer.

#76

depends on how you conceptualize voices/what you are trying to get out of it. with clever modulation you can make a lot of different sounds with not a lot of modules.

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#77

I suppose I think of a voice as something that can play a melody, with reasonably interesting timbral options. So for four voices you need (at least) four oscillator modules, right? Even though the modules are dual oscillators, one is typically used to modulate the other.

If you look at the suggested Skylab config (https://buchla.com/skylab/), it seems to be a two voice system (two oscillator modules)… is that right?

#78

You have plenty of timbral options even when using all the 4 oscillators to generate “melodies”: you have two bandpass filters, you have the frequency shifter, you have the noise source, etc… Or you could, as @gigasturtz notes, use only two voices and make them appear as a lot more than that. When you come from an east-coast POW it’s difficult to think about it at first, but once you get into it, your head explodes. Still, I think it costs a lot for what it is.

1 Like
#79

If you want gated sounds (i.e. not drones), the standard Skylab is good for four voices, as it offers four lowpass gates in the 292e. The 207e mixer/pre-amp offers six channels, so you have enough mixer channels available to add two manually controlled drones to the four gated voices. If you push things to the max, the Skylab can offer a total of nine mixer channels (four gated ones from the 292e, take the 292e’s “all” output into one of the 207e six channels, leaving five channels for manually controlled drones), but in this case the gating (haha) item is the limited number of significantly controllable sound sources in the Skylab.

From my experience, you can get four melodic gated voices out of the 259e (one voice using the principal oscillator, the other using the modulation one) and the 261e (dto.) and the 292e, plus two drones (ranging from filtered noise to whistling to metallic sounds) via the two bandpass filters of the 267e (fed with noise) and the 285e’s frequency shifter and balanced modulator.

But over time I settled for using both the 259e and the 261e in its “standard” configuration, i.e. not using their modulation oscillator’s as audio sources, but as a modulation source. Gives much more animated sounds in my book.

As an example, here’s the music I made for my very short video from 2012, done entirely with the standard Skylab configuration in one go (without overdubs). Two main voices, the 251e was doing the sequencing, 267e filtered noise for some percussion, Elektron Octatrack was just used for echos and recording the stereo mix from the 207e.

10 Likes
#80

Just saw this on the SonicState website:

Buchla U.S.A. has introduced a subsidiary company called Red Panel . They tell us that Red Panel was created to pursue new and innovative Buchla-related musical instruments that are priced within the reach of the average musician.

For its first line of products, Red Panel has worked closely with Dave Small of Catalyst Audio and Buchla artist consultant Todd Barton in order to bring Don Buchla’s seminal product line, the 100 Series, to the Eurorack format.

Exciting news! Official Buchla, at a more accessible price can only be a good thing.

https://sonicstate.com/news/2019/01/24/namm-2019-buchlas-red-panel-affordable-synths/

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#81

The modules they’re announcing are exactly the same as Catalyst’s already existing 100 series clones, it looks like they’re simply making them an officially Buchla product, which seems to be a win all around!

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#82

i understand the business pressure to get into the eurorack game (and was pretty sure something like this was coming) but it will be interesting to see how this pans out for them. one of the beautiful things about eurorack is the ability to build your own instrument from the components that hold the most appeal to your goals; i imagine the more general purpose modules will frequently be looked over in favor of the current options that serve similar functions in a more space efficient manner, with the exception being single-manufacturer systems.

i suppose the primary selling points are access to a full, first party Buchla system (though this implementation taken a corkscrew path to being first party) at a lower price point that will also effectively interface with current eurorack systems.

#84

Except possibly for those of us with Catalyst Audio 100 modules we’d like to pass on to a new home :confused:

Still, it’s good for the Catalyst modules to be made more official, and it sounds like they’re essentially bringing them in-house more or less unchanged, possibly with some better access to old 100 hardware for research purposes. This can only be a good thing.

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#85

These look nice!

https://youtu.be/3RabdCF86MI

#86

Except for a logo looking like it would rather sit on the poster for a new Vin Diesel movie.

(…apologies. I don’t like it when people post complaint posts – they contribute so little – and no excuse, I just couldn’t help myself. I find everything about this, apart from perhaps adding to this general malaise of relentless nostalgia – presented by two old white men – really wonderful actually, making the logo all the more grating… Don’t sweat the small stuff, I keep telling myself. And then: God is in the details. And I don’t even believe in God.)

(Edited for… clarity?)

1 Like
#87

I do wish it just said Buchla. Relieved that the whole panel is not red though (which seemed to be a given). And yes, I feel bad about a complaint post too. :disappointed_relieved:

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