Bugbrand WOM Pro

Some sounds from Tom Bugs' DIY Workshop Osc Machine Pro.



I've just built my WOM Pro, which I got from Tom at his recent gig in Berlin. Despite its simple looks, the WOM is capable of a wealth of complex, ear-shredding noises:

Bugbrand WOM Pro by navs

The kit comes with all necessary parts, excellent instructions and was a joy to build. The schematic reminded me of some of the circuits in Nicolas Collins' Handmade Electronic Music, some of which I used in my Trobetronic40. What makes the WOM special is its power starve, touch plate control and, I suspect, its CMOS-based mixer. The latter seems responsible not just for volume control, but also the way the oscillators interact. Click here for more info on the build.

The WOM Pro puts out enough juice to be plugged directly into the modular and, used with an envelope follower, random generator and the Borg filter, is capable of Benjolin-esque sounds. Try setting the VCO range switches to a midway position. The resulting uncertainty opens up another can of bug-sounds.

Thanks to Tom for an excellent kit. I was going to give the WOM away as a present, but it's too much fun - highly recommended!

Tom Bugs Live in Berlin

If you're in Berlin this Friday, be sure to catch Mr Bugbrand, Tom Bugs, at the Auxxx in Prenzlauer Berg:

Kastanienallee 77 (Lichtblick Kino) 10435 Berlin
Friday 7th Oct. Doors @ 21:00, Show @ 22:00



"Legendary analogue electronic instrument inventor Tom Bugs comes over from Bristol with his personal BugBrand Modular setup for a discussion and performance." More info at the Auxxx blog.

From Bananas to Blippoos

Some pictures from a day in Richard Scott's studio.









Richard's studio is an Aladdin's Cave of Banana-jack synths. The Buchla VCO was on its way to its new owner, so I was lucky to get a chance to hear it. While it looks fantastic, I wasn't taken by its sound. Financially speaking, this is probably a good thing. The Serge & CGS system was much more to my taste. I was surprised at how familiar I was with its patching vocabulary, due in part to certain Serge-inspired Euro modules, and was able to dive straight in. The Bugbrand is a cracking, compact system with a gutsy sound. But of all the synths in the studio, I lost my heart to the two Hordijk boxes, the wonderful Blippoo and Benjolin.

Thanks to Richard for a wonderful afternoon and the pukka pakoras!

Under Pressure

Introducing Hubert, a DIY pressure controller.

I got to play with the prototype last week and had a lot of fun. Here's a brief description of this hand-held device from Zauner Elektronik:

"Each channel has three outputs: CV Out, Inverted CV Out and Gate out. Each side is capable of holding the current voltage on CV Out, whereas the inverted CV appears on Inverted CV Out. If a CV is held in the CV Out you still can use the inverted out, even switching from positive to negative voltage as often as you want without disturbing the held CV output."

The hold function exhibits minimal droop and is key to working with Hubert: you can set a voltage with the pressure pads, sample it and then use the second output to generate another voltage on the same channel. This gives you a total of two dynamic and two static CVs.

I'm looking forward to getting my hands on Make Noise's Pressure Points but, having seen Katavist's wonderful BugBrand CTL-1/ Wiard JAG demo, I'm beginning to wonder whether it offers the full monty viz. its current lack of sequencing options.

Also, despite the allusion in the name of the Make Noise module and the controller description at the BugBrand site, neither of these interfaces actually respond to pressure. This might be semantic hair-splitting on my part but, as you can see from the Hubert demo video, there really is a different feel to playing a device with genuine pressure sensors.

Zauner are currently working on a second revision which will include two independent manual gate buttons and threshold level pots for the pressure-activated gates.