2023: A Year in Gear (What You've Bought or Want to Buy in 2023)

[WatchTheGuitar]

Reely expensive

I know but I think they were like £30 for Ampex tape back in the day (you know the kind that either sheds or turned to a sticky mess).

Reely?

[elxsound]

Make the puns stop!

[ChamomileShark]

Reely expensive

I know but I think they were like £30 for Ampex tape back in the day (you know the kind that either sheds or turned to a sticky mess).

Reely?

Yes. It sent me reeling too when I looked at the prices. Unreel.

[WatchTheGuitar]

Make the puns stop!

Who are you, the pun fleece?

[vurt]

Make the puns stop!

check the calendar, mine says punday.
day after paturday.

[WatchTheGuitar]

Yeah, but you’re Irish so our Paturday should be your Blarneyday.

[ghettosynth]

On my wish list is Ornament and Crime. Does anyone have an opinion/experience with the different variants? The micro-models seem to be missing the scaling pots on the inputs. I'm trying to decide if I should save money and just buy/(make) more attenuverters with the difference?

[WatchTheGuitar]

On my wish list is Ornament and Crime. Does anyone have an opinion/experience with the different variants? The micro-models seem to be missing the scaling pots on the inputs. I'm trying to decide if I should save money and just buy/(make) more attenuverters with the difference?

Tiny attenuators are horrible anyway from my experience. I have a couple of the micro style O_c modules, an After Later using standard firmware and an Antumbra one on Hemispheres. Both excellent.

For separate attenuverters, I have a couple of these…

https://www.thomann.de/gb/rides_in_the_storm_qua.htm
a decent quad attenuverter for £40 a pop, one of which is permanently hooked up on my rack to a Doepfer A-145-4 quad LFO, also a bit of a bargain at around £75.

[foosnark]

Ordered a jroo Loop...

I like this... seemingly very simple but thoughtful cv controls in just 8hp.

Now that I've had a chance to play with it... minor nitpick, but I wish it had a dedicated erase button. Instead you have to set the speed to 0 and then flip the Record toggle switch up and down 3 times, which feels kind of awkward.

I also wish there was some way to sync it, either on the input or an end-of-cycle gate. The buffer length is set by the length of the first recording and can't be adjusted. You can use a gate from a sequence, but the timing is a little bit slow so it quickly gets out of sync with the original tempo.

Other than that though, I do like the interface quite a lot, and I'm finding some fun uses for it. It'll get lo-fi if you slow the speed down, good for both loops and delays. Recording drones with it, then repitching them and layering, is probably what I'm going to use it for more than traditional looper stuff.

Even the off timing is something to play around with a bit if you keep toggling recording off and on.

[WatchTheGuitar]

As I ran out of rack space I had a hankering for a little synth I could tinker with that would fit on my coffee table and I picked up a used Behringer Pro-1 at a good price. Think there’s enough room for that, my Keystep and a couple of hardware effects and I could even run it all from my iPad.

I mean I could have done exactly the same with gear I already own like the Crave, Boog D, Neutron or TD-1. Or my Uno Synth. Just shut up!

Yes, that’s how it is.

[vurt]

my apologies to the modular noobs, and to my mother for my language, but holy shit

[ghettosynth]

my apologies to the modular noobs, and to my mother for my language, but holy shit

A lot of that is being carried by Morphagene. Something that I like about modern modular is that it's not just about analog anymore.

At any rate, Low pass gates, decidedly missing from my modular, unless you count digital ones stuck in this and that. Natural Gate is sexy and cool, but way expensive and I don't know if I want to be that committed yet. I'm not interested in the vast plethora of passive budget LPG, what do we recommend?

[Shabdahbriah]

SteadyStateFate_Steady-State-Gate.jpg

dynamix.jpg

[foosnark]

Natural Gate is sexy and cool, but way expensive and I don't know if I want to be that committed yet. I'm not interested in the vast plethora of passive budget LPG, what do we recommend?

The Doeper LPG sounds good, but they do absolutely no testing of vactrols, they just ship whatever random parts they happen to get. The one in mine had almost no decay time, so I had to forget about the ping input and always use an envelope.

Pittsburgh Modular makes a couple of non-vactrol LPGs. The Dynamic Impulse Filter sounds good, but the decay times on it were way too short too with the response knob barely doing anything. Maybe the newer Dynamics Controller Bat is better, because the one in the West Pest is pretty good.

I have heard really good things about (and good demos of) the Electro-Acouistic Research Model 13 Mini.

One of them that interested me but I've never gotten to try is Synthfox Sledgehammer. It's got a bunch of distortion stuff as well as the LPG.

Verbos Amp & Tone is another hot one, but it's almost as pricey as NG while only having a single channel.

[ghettosynth]

Natural Gate is sexy and cool, but way expensive and I don't know if I want to be that committed yet. I'm not interested in the vast plethora of passive budget LPG, what do we recommend?

The Doeper LPG sounds good, but they do absolutely no testing of vactrols, they just ship whatever random parts they happen to get. The one in mine had almost no decay time, so I had to forget about the ping input and always use an envelope.

Well that's good to know. I have a bag of NOS vactrols somewhere. Maybe I should just try DIYing the basic Buchla. I tried to find a panel, but I don't want spend so much on a panel+pcb only to not be happy with it. I don't mind for things that are lower risk.

Pittsburgh Modular makes a couple of non-vactrol LPGs. The Dynamic Impulse Filter sounds good, but the decay times on it were way too short too with the response knob barely doing anything. Maybe the newer Dynamics Controller Bat is better, because the one in the West Pest is pretty good.

Maybe I'll just get a west pest. I assume that you can use LPG in and take the output from output?

Verbos Amp & Tone is another hot one, but it's almost as pricey as NG while only having a single channel.

Yeah, mad respect to Mark Verbos, but that's off the deep end from my POV. I'm not into Buchla Boutique, whether it's true Buchla, or bargain Buchla, for some definition of bargain.