Just wanted to get a place for us all to talk about Colour modules. Your favorites, mods you’ve tried, etc.
I’ll start based on something I recently learned. It looks like in addition to the selection of modules included on the DIYRE site, there are a number available direct from HRK that are not listed.
Curious about this one as it’s one of the pairs I’ve got coming. What did you like it on? Did you do anything special with the build (or find any discussion of mods somewhere online)?
Should probably see about having a moderator move this post into this thread:
Couple others:
(portion of this one has some talk about some of the HRK modules):
I pre-ordered the Colour Palette Duo and picked up a pair of the 15IPS and Colourupter circuits, too. My thought is to use it mostly for bus processing and some saturation/distortion when tracking synths/samples/loops. I’m a novice when it comes to processing in the “pro audio” world so I deliberately choose one subtle and one not so subtle color to start out with to see how I find myself using them. Definitely wanna try some Louder than Liftoff circuits eventually.
Just a bump to say I (almost*) finished my Duo preamp, here it is with the top off.
It was a lot of fun, super impressed with the way the kit was put together. There was like 13 individual bags of components (organized by section/type…some even had sub-bags) so there were good, natural stopping points throughout the build. And there was both a step-by-step build manual, as well as this interactive web app that lets you see where the components are on the pcb and check them off as you go (cool to see a progress bar that’s filling up as you build). I had those opened side-by-side on an iPad at my work area.
The drawer mechanism feels nice and solid (there are pieces of metal that reinforce pretty much the entire area of the pcb). It actually weighs more than you’d expect looking at the size due to that. The stepped pots, knobs and switches all feel solid. All in all, definitely feels much more expensive than the $550 price on the base kit.
I also finished a pair of the JFT colours this evening, which were super quick and easy.
*I did accidentally mess up a cap, totally a stupid error on my part. purchased a replacement and am eagerly awaiting it to arrive so I can put it in and test it out.
I’ll share some A/B’d recordings through some of the colours soon once I get it all set up.
I designed three colour modules for Peterson years ago. I taught myself Eagle and had them ready to go, but decided not to release them due to being in over my experience level and not wanting to release a commercial product that could potentially fail due to my own inexperience.
They were a square wave fuzz (inspired by Anderson’s Electronic Projects for Musicians), a Belton Brick reverb and a THAT compressor.
I’ve since sold my 500 series Colour stuff and miss it sometimes.
I just finished my build - echoing @jlmitch5 to say it’s a very well designed kit that’s easy to follow along with, and indeed feels very sturdy. I have a stereo pair of the Colourupter and IPS15 circuits.
This first test is on the master just to test saturation characteristics. Admittedly this is not very neutral source material but it does what I was hoping these circuits would do: reign in peaks, add weight and texture.
Signal chain is Analog Rytm (bass + aux percussion) → SP404 (sampeled drums) → BAM (room algo) → Colour Duo
very nice! unfortunately mine had to go back to the farm for some testing on some noise issues with one of the mic preamps we couldn’t debug over email (very kind of them to do that though!), otherwise it was incredible for the brief bit I had it so far, I processed the master of a handful of songs though it. I am very excited to get it back.
I did some comparing to my analog heat and saturn 2 plugin. They all have their strengths and weaknesses, I think I personally prefer the Duo’s vibe for subtle saturation on the master with the colours I have.
I now have five stereo pairs of colour modules 
(colourupter, mn-50 smash comp, 15ips, distortastudio, jft). The only one that is not super well stereo matched is the colourupter (which I think is just vactrol differences, and it’s mostly level that I can fix with different trims, though that does mess with my ocd a bit, hah). They all are pretty great, I was surprised how much I liked the distorrtastudio pair, because I wasn’t vibing as much to the demo. I talked to a friend who had a pair and he said something similar. How are yours @kbit?
I haven’t done enough close listening to be able to tell but I’ll give them a try with some headphones in the next few days.
ah word, yea mine it’s like somewhere between 3 to 6 dbs of difference when they are on, it’s obvious on the interface meters or daw.
Oh weird, yeah I didn’t notice anything like that with my pair.
Vactrols really are luck of the draw, huh?
