A synth that may have slipped under the radar for some out there is the Rare Waves Hydronium, which came out in 2019.
I bring it up now as it is one of the few other semi-modular synthesizers out there that utilizes an effects loop on the back panel, implemented before the VCA in order to reduce the noise that is often involved with following a synth signal with distortion units. This is relevant now because Intellijel’s Cascadia, released this year, makes use of this idea.
The Hydronium is a smaller, more limited machine that focuses on 303-style acid sounds, although Rare Waves insists that it is a new design and not a mere clone.
Here’s a nice vid of someone using a distortion pedal with the Hydronium:
My Blinkus finally arrived (ordering during Superbooth delayed the shipping a little bit)
With one input, you can use it as a sort of psuedo-rectifier (using any jack as the input and an adjacent jack as the output) or waveshaper (using opposite corner jacks). With two or three inputs it’s a sort of dirty ring modulator-ish thing. Works very nicely with audio and/or CV. Is a good friend to Just Friends.
I love the concept of it. Of all the little boutique companies putting out these tiny 0hp utilities (Mystic Circuits, Herzlich, St Modular) that one is the most experimental of the bunch. It can do ring mod-ish stuff, but it also looks like it can do distortion and logic stuff.
Your mention of logic had me trying out some gates from Teletype, and while I wouldn’t say it’s doing anything recognizable boolean-wise, it’s creating some fun CV patterns. Right now I’ve got it merging two Euclidean rhythms and the gate output from Mimeophon, which because of Skew, is a little twitchy and adding some “bubbles” to my reverb-heavy patch.
DecadeBridge released a bunch of nice utilities recently: matrix mixer, vca/lpg, etc.
I’m planning on getting a few as I like to build small systems occasionally. ETSY link
