For the last couple of year I’ve written up my conversations with all of the modular manufacturers I could visit during the most recent NAMM show, starting on the first night of the show. This year, for personal reasons, I was on a different schedule, but I’m finally starting my manufacturer-by-manufacturer reports, to be spread out over several installments.
The Sputnik Modular West Coast Random Source is a very capable Eurorack-format update on the classic Buchla Source of Uncertainty module. In this movie, I focus first on uses for those 1:2 switches, including using them to send alternating note-on gate or triggers to alternating drum sounds. Then I move on to showing the sample and hold itself, first with the typical “science fiction soundtrack” random pitch technique, and then for something more subtle such as randomly changing the pulse width.
After discussing some rather advanced modules in the previous installment, this time I focus on low-fi modules from Catalyst (Buchla 100 recreations and Soulsby (8-bit oscillator+filter+…), as well as a couple of interesting new offerings from Warm Star.
This is the story of the one that got away: a rare Buchla Model 248-1602 Multiple Arbitrary Function Generator as well as set of other rare and unusual modules. I acquired it ~30 years ago, but let it go ~20 years ago. Fortunately, now it’s going to end up in some excellent hands.