Finally, had some time to spare for a friday night synth session, containing two new synths in the collection: the MFB Dominion I and the Roland JD-990. Many thanks to J for recommending the latter one, it is really fantastic. I routed it through the Polivoks DIY VCF to add some (manually controlled by the left hand) analog filter touch to the already flawless, but digital pad sounds!
As always, many thanks to TK. for creating everything MIDIbox, without it, i would have given up the idea of doing those live synth jams a long time ago, now creating a track is just a matter of a few hours, sitting down, recording some sequences and having fun, no computer needed
Thanks for watching and listening and have a great weekend!
Peter
Regarding the Polivoks VCF - it is Marc Bareilles clone-version, I DIY-built it years ago as a stereo version on veroboard, just exchanged the VCF potentiometer (mono) with a stereo pot and built the circuit twice. It is not difficult and can be done in an evening. The filter output is very convincing, quite lo-fi, a bit distorted (if you want to) with mad resonance (if you want to) and is a highly recommended DIY build. It sounds really great (+15V/0V/-15V bipolar PSU required for the opamps). It should also integrate nicely into euro(c)rack setups! http://m.bareille.free.fr/modular1/vcf_polivoks/vcf_polivoks.htm
Nice to see the Dominion in action! I have a eurorack version of the Polivoks with the original Russian ICs. It’s a cool design because the filter corner frequency is controlled by the variable slew rate of one op amp. Quite a different sound!
Thanks a lot, Andy! Yes, i love the Polivoks, too! :-) I don’t know how much difference there is is between the original russian opamps and the cloned version, but Marc Bareille posted a description of someone who a-b tested clone vs original and said it was close! If you buy the widely available non-russian parts, the whole build costs only around 20€ (without the PSU)…
Thanks J! I am so thankful for your synth suggestions a few years back. All of them were fantastic!
(But i gotta tell you, last week i managed to acquire a really cheap dave smith evolver desktop, that really begs for a programma interface! It is a great 4 osc (2 analog/2 digital) monosynth with supercool modulation possibilities, if you don’t have one, yet… ! :-))
Ilmenator: hehe, well, there are those occasional evilbay sales… but i passed on the last poly rack sale due to government restrictions, too ;-). But i think, even the single voice evolver has some really cool features and yet a quite low price (~ 300 bucks).
