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astroid's ruin (psyingo) modular UPDATE

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Author: astroid on February 06 2008

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--> our much-beloved and feared psyingo, under the name 'ruin electronics' has done it again. he made me a hell of a box. the pictures are some of the ones he took, and some of its current resting spot in dogbowl studios.

THE MODULES:

osc- two knobs, two jacks. one knob for waveform (slides smoothly from tri to square) one knob for cv. one jack for cv (sounds kinda rather like sync than fm-a unique sound for sure) one for out

osc/lfo- three knobs, two jacks. same as the osc, but with a knob to switch it into low frequency.

drum synth- three knobs, two jacks. one jack for trigger in. one knob controls pitch, one controls feedback (it's a ringing filter circuit), and the last one is a pure mystery that changes everything. even psyingo doesn't understand that knob

pll- the prize jewel in the modular. four jacks, one knob. one jack for signal in, which then track the signal and puts out a square wave corresponding to the phase of the input (or something like that): phase locked loop. the other two inputs, one is for cv (i don't really know what's going on, maybe it controls the pulse width?), the other is for an external oscillator, replacing the squarewave it outputs. the knob supposedly does the same thing as the cv jack, but i really don't understand.

inverter/buffer- two jacks. inverts, buffers the signal

comparator- three jacks. compares the levels of input a and b and outputs a high signal when a is greater than b

vc filter- three jacks. this has a cv input used to control the voltage. it's a very mild filter, which is good for vibratos and tremolos.

vc distortion- three jacks. very grungy optocoupler circuit. makes soft things insanely loud and trashy. voltage controlled! this is a ruin electronics classic, great for destroying loops and waveforms alike.

2-1 mixer- fairly sloppy, bleeding mixer.

amp- radio shack amp phil painted black and then velcro'd into the lid. hot shit

THE SAMPLES AND TRACKS

link

comparator stuffs01- good example of using the comparator as a grungy kind of pwm/chorus thing

comparator stuffs02- using the comparator to make a complicated waveform (a res filtered squarewave, i think) have pwm

pll 01- the most basic the pll will sound, with a simple waveform on the input and an lfo on the cv input

pll 02- some of the insanity that the pll likes to delve into. it's a less complex patch than you'd think, but i don't remember what it is.

pll 03- characteristic patch made by 'starving' the pll. if you feed the module less signal, it seems to jump octaves. so, the waveform going into the pll is the only thing changing here, and it's mostly being reduced in volume at audio rates (you can hear me slow that waveform down and up around halfway through)

storsh 01- the vc distortion ruining a ring mod tone

storsh 03- the pll annihilating a simple g2 duophonic sequence. the only thing i'm doing to change the patch is controlling the levels of the two raw oscs going into the pll.

modtest1_01- simple track made by letting the two modulars groove together. using a few modules here, including the drum synth for the boomy stuff (also digital delay and verb)

pll 04- using lots of modules and also the little amp, to amplify a mic signal i was picking up from my speakers. otherwise, this one is internally sequenced (oviously using some digital delay and verb)

storsh_02- simple algo sequence from the g2, my oscs being totally wrecked by the ruin gear. (digital delay, too). you can get a good feel on this one of how fucked up his modular is as an fx unit.

storsh_04- made this one today, just kept it very raw so as to hear the crackles and noise. the pll is making this one a total mess.

THE THOUGHTS:

i love it. he made a really nasty bit of gear, tore off a slice of ruin and put it in a box. it does exactly what i want-making it easy to control exactly how and what kind of signal destruction i want. but, it also has a lot of useful utility modules which aren't immediately obvious to use. everything has a bunch of quirks and surprises and little sweet spots. it's like owning a work of art. it's also fun to use this box on it's own, which you can, because it's TOTALLY BATTERY POWERED AND PORTABLE. i can use this to annihilate bhaji's loops on the go

i know this box is unique, nobody has anything like it. phil worked with me at every step of the process, discussing what modules we thought should go in, and how i'd use it (this is why there's so many patch points as opposed to knobs). i'm proud to own one of the first bigger pieces from a synthmaker with a very different aesthetic. i think he's going to make some great stuff, in pursuit of these fucked up rusty poisonous sounds in his head.

I didn't get as long to do this blog as i had wanted to (work is keeping me very busy), but i didn't want to wait any more. the samples don't really show off what this thing can do. in lieu of something as exhaustive as i wanted to make, i just had to give a slice, a peek into the world of this modular. i have been/will be using the shit out of this modular, especially in electronic stuff. it just sounds so damn good and unique.

i'd rather not say in public how much he charged me for this, because it was almost criminally low. if you ask me in private, i'll tell you, but i hope he wouldn't build the same thing again for so cheap.

thank you, phil

PS: you should all try to hear psyingo's album "buried in rust". it makes heavy use of this modular (he made an ep with it before he sent it to me)

ANND HERE IT IS:

link

plz listen to that, it really shows the modular off

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Comments

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02/06/08 + DrexonField

Wow! the pics are awesome.
that box looks ill

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