Buchla 200 in Euro format (Tiptop)

[axm311]

Testing and churning through various LPGs for “that sound” has been one of the more pointless money wasting exercises I have delved into in Eurorack.

With that said, the sound of the 208C LPG is my favorite, so if this is a collab with Buchla hopefully 292t sounds like that.

I just recently bought a 208c and was actually a little disappointed in the LPG! It rang out a little too long for my taste, i couldn't get super tight snappy percussion. I highly prefer the vactrolless lpg's Natural Gate and Steady Stage SSG that let you dial in the response and i think they sound outstanding and i actually like the sounds i get out of them more, even in terms of tone. I do love my vactrol Tokyo Gate LPG too though, it has a great dampening circuit that shortens the decay and has a really nice sound. I was excited about the 292 at first but I realized it dosnt really get any better then the lpgs i have in my system already, for my use.

Wow interesting! I wonder if your opinion on 208C is due to tolerances in parts and responses, or personal preference / subjectivity. With the envelope at minimum sliders across the board (transient setting) and a folded sine wave with a hint of spring verb and FM just gives a fantastic plucky sound.

How you described the 208C LPG is exactly how I felt about Optomix - a very "flubby" response and the damping control took a lot of balls out of the sound imo (not a technical term) and I found it not very useful as a control.

I have the SSG also and I find it a little difficult to dial in the sweet spots with too many combinations resulting in a sound that is far from what I am going for. Caveat is that I've spent the least time with it since it's my newest module and haven't had much wiggling time, so it may just take some time for me to master.

I also really like the Intellijel 1U LPG though there is next to zero control and you need an attenuator in the CV path for certain modules (218t to be on topic). That gets closest to my 208C for folded sine plucks.

[Triglav]

Thomas White quad then

Don't unless you are throwing down for vintage vactrols. I recently built one. The design responds like poop to DIY vactrols and the xvive ones are shit.

The MEMS guys are making new VTL5C3 replacements, hopefully they will be available soon.
Also Thomas White has some errors in it that mess up the CV response. (2 resistors are a bit off and 1 is way off. Easy fixes, but be careful.)

[cbm]

On a technical note, how do you make vactrol style smoothness/character without them? The only things I've come across that felt nice were the MI emulations which I think were done with a microprocessor and sort of modelled which the 292t isn't going to do right?

A lot of it is smart shaping of the control signals. Essentially a downward slew on the CV. I'm sure it took a bunch of tuning to get something like the Natural Gate to feel right:

[exper]

This will be the most expensive 200t module yet. I think the prices will keep rising, the demand is there for sure.

They also started out with pretty basic modules, so the lower cost makes sense.

The next steps seem to be a 259T and 296T, so expect quite a bit of a price hike.

[fosferus]

bc.jpg (11.04 KiB) Viewed 1320 times

now LET me break this down so the KEEYIDs can undertAND it.. YORUpe's going be doing the BLIppin and the BLAppin while the YOOnited STAYtes will be geTTing the bleeping and the blOOping. do i have that RYIGHT mr tiptop audiOOOOOOO?

[enzyme00]

Thomas White quad then

Don't unless you are throwing down for vintage vactrols. I recently built one. The design responds like poop to DIY vactrols and the xvive ones are shit.

The MEMS guys are making new VTL5C3 replacements, hopefully they will be available soon.
Also Thomas White has some errors in it that mess up the CV response. (2 resistors are a bit off and 1 is way off. Easy fixes, but be careful.)

Yes, I'm very excited for the MEMS vactrols to be available. Hopefully it's not tooooo much longer.

There was some talk of Tiptop eventually selling the ones they developed for DIY.

If I ever get vactrols I'm actually happy with, I'd planned on doing a consolidated build thread on the Thomas White Quad Lopass Gate. The build info is smeared all over the place, got it working just fine though.

[robotfunk]

With vactrols it was always a lottery what response you would get. Buying a QMMG or 292 would be like buying a random pack of baseball cards except you'd be stuck with the set of 4 you could trade with another similar set. Something like a NG is more like an RPG game where you get to tweak every baseball player's personality along various traits, most of them under voltage control.

[LaBelleAurore]

Thomas White quad then

Don't unless you are throwing down for vintage vactrols. I recently built one. The design responds like poop to DIY vactrols and the xvive ones are shit.

The guitar pedal diy guys have a wealth of good info about rolling your own vactrols for critical applications. They seem to find success by ensuring that the LDR has the correct on/off resistances and then using yellow diffused LEDs, sometimes adding a series resistor so the LED doesn’t get too bright.

[BLogic12]

(sorry this is off topic a bit but wanted to respond to axm311)

Wow interesting! I wonder if your opinion on 208C is due to tolerances in parts and responses, or personal preference / subjectivity.

It is likely a combination of both.

With the envelope at minimum sliders across the board (transient setting) and a folded sine wave with a hint of spring verb and FM just gives a fantastic plucky sound.

No doubt it sounded excellent, but so does my euro system. i just didnt feel the 208c added anything i wasn't already getting, so it overall felt very redundant. I have been refining my euro system for so long and i have it dialed in so perfectly for my needs/uses now.

I have the SSG also and I find it a little difficult to dial in the sweet spots with too many combinations resulting in a sound that is far from what I am going for. Caveat is that I've spent the least time with it since it's my newest module and haven't had much wiggling time, so it may just take some time for me to master.

I agree the SSG is hard to dial in. The natural gate on the other hand just always sounds beautiful, you cant get it to sound bad!
The SSG HUGE range of sound and thats what makes it so hard to dial in. To get it the most natural and typical lpg sounding I keep the decay and freq sliders relatively high. I also have to attenuate the trig going into excite to only about 25% of its full level- this rounds off the attack just enough. then lastly, adding a touch of Q(resonance) just adds a beautiful tone over the whole thing.
the SSG is a tricky balancing act between decay and frequency- very touchy and very particular sweet spots. sometimes it seems like the freq slider has more of an impact on decay than the decay slider does (which is interesting)! There is also some characteristic differences between the 1lp and 2lp modes. You really need to spend time dialing in and experimenting but i have really come to apricate the massive range of sounds you can get out of it, especially with the folding a saturation possibilities on top of it all. There really no other lpg (or filter even) quite like it

I also really like the Intellijel 1U LPG though there is next to zero control and you need an attenuator in the CV path for certain modules (218t to be on topic). That gets closest to my 208C for folded sine plucks.

In my system the Tokyo gate is probably most similar to the 208c lpg when i compared them. It just has the advantage of that dampening circuit you can dial in to shorten the decay and unlike the optomix (which the dampening circuit just killed the tone and naturalness) the Tokyo gate dampened just sounds wonderful.

[windspirit]

Thomas White quad then

Don't unless you are throwing down for vintage vactrols. I recently built one. The design responds like poop to DIY vactrols and the xvive ones are shit.

The guitar pedal diy guys have a wealth of good info about rolling your own vactrols for critical applications. They seem to find success by ensuring that the LDR has the correct on/off resistances and then using yellow diffused LEDs, sometimes adding a series resistor so the LED doesn’t get too bright.

You also have to test for the decay time and the "light memory". Sometimes vactrols will have a lower resistance after being exposed to light once rather than being in the dark for awhile. This lasts around 10 - 30 seconds on some vactrols and can cause bleed even if you tested the vactrol and didnt see it before. Its honestly easiest in my experience to just test built vactrols in-circuit.

Fwiw I only have one product with vactrols and even thought its simple its a huge pain in the ass. Im probably going to phase them out.

[Jumbuktu]

The next steps seem to be a 259T and 296T, so expect quite a bit of a price hike.

I'd like to think he would do a 259t, but do you have any indication from TipTop that either are on the drawing board?

[axm311]

the SSG is a tricky balancing act between decay and frequency- very touchy and very particular sweet spots. sometimes it seems like the freq slider has more of an impact on decay than the decay slider does (which is interesting)!

This bolded part is very insightful and think it changed my perspective on how I should be approaching SSG. Often times I stumble upon a brilliant sound but the settings don’t really mesh with what I’m hearing, maybe this is why.

A lot of great SSG tips for me to try in your reply so appreciate the detailed OT post!

[exper]

The next steps seem to be a 259T and 296T, so expect quite a bit of a price hike.

I'd like to think he would do a 259t, but do you have any indication from TipTop that either are on the drawing board?

Both were teased by tiptop. On Instagram I believe. Probably several pages back now.

I think there was a PCB shown of the 296T, and a screenshot of a folder or files called 259T.

https://www.modwiggler.com/forum/viewto ... 9#p3800421
https://www.modwiggler.com/forum/viewto ... 6#p3723368

[Jumbuktu]

The next steps seem to be a 259T and 296T, so expect quite a bit of a price hike.

I'd like to think he would do a 259t, but do you have any indication from TipTop that either are on the drawing board?

Both were teased by tiptop. On Instagram I believe. Probably several pages back now.

I think there was a PCB shown of the 296T, and a screenshot of a folder or files called 259T.

https://www.modwiggler.com/forum/viewto ... 9#p3800421
https://www.modwiggler.com/forum/viewto ... 6#p3723368

Nice!

A six-input mixer and a touch interface would round the system off nicely. A 16-step version of the 5-step voltage source would probably be expensive but it would be a logical development of the existing module and by my guess would sell reasonably well.

[redmotion]

Maybe 4 vactrols is the max the regs are prepared to pass while 8 would be "taking the p***".

Seriously disappointing.

"Later in the year" - based on previous release date movement - could easily be December rather than summer....

EDIT: Jolin Labs Agogo has 8, so it can't be that. You can even purchase it as a DIY kit, so essentially 'endangering' yourself more than if you purchased a pre-built one.

[nectarios]

This will be the most expensive 200t module yet. I think the prices will keep rising, the demand is there for sure.

They also started out with pretty basic modules, so the lower cost makes sense.

The next steps seem to be a 259T and 296T, so expect quite a bit of a price hike.

Yep. After the initial enthusiasm of the 258t and 281t prices, it was becoming clear that prices would go up to "normal" (as in not the budget prices that Dieter Doepfer thought of when he was paving the way for eurorack) ranges as the more "complex" modules where getting announced.
I have a 9U case ready for the Buchla 200t system, so that's the only eurorack project I am going to be spending money on.
I have lots of modules, more than I need anyway, so studio budget is reserved for the 200t rig.

[Obefreq]

Could you advise me for midi to cv module which works with TipTop Buchla 0-10v/gate trigger?

[bhmcc]

I've had luck with a Hexinverter Mutant Brain... Triggers the 281t just fine.

[kwaidan]

You could also use a Doepfer A-183-4 Quad Level Shifter to boost a trigger or gate to 12v.

[Obefreq]

But this Doepfer shift level to +12v is it not to much? Is there any other voltage converter ?

[clarke68]

The 292t is actually coming in a little cheaper than I expected. It was always going to be the most expensive of this initial round of Tiptop/Buchla modules, if only because of the labor involved in matching the response of 8 vactrols per module. It's why Makenoise initially discontinued the QMMG, and why they cost $649 whenever they do get around to manufacturing a run of them.

I have 4 of the Thomas White LPGs that I built years ago. I've never been thrilled with them...of the 4, two work pretty well and the other two don't. I've always assumed it was because of the broad tolerances of the vactrols, but I've never gotten around to fixing them because I don't like desoldering. All that said, they've never sounded as good as they do being hit with 10v from the 281t, so I am hopeful about the 292t. I can see myself getting a vactrol version in March, and then a non-vactrol version later and having both "flavors".

[enzyme00]

Thomas White quad then

Don't unless you are throwing down for vintage vactrols. I recently built one. The design responds like poop to DIY vactrols and the xvive ones are shit.

The guitar pedal diy guys have a wealth of good info about rolling your own vactrols for critical applications. They seem to find success by ensuring that the LDR has the correct on/off resistances and then using yellow diffused LEDs, sometimes adding a series resistor so the LED doesn’t get too bright.

You also have to test for the decay time and the "light memory". Sometimes vactrols will have a lower resistance after being exposed to light once rather than being in the dark for awhile. This lasts around 10 - 30 seconds on some vactrols and can cause bleed even if you tested the vactrol and didnt see it before. Its honestly easiest in my experience to just test built vactrols in-circuit.

Fwiw I only have one product with vactrols and even thought its simple its a huge pain in the ass. Im probably going to phase them out.

Exactly, I've built at least two dozen DIY vactrols using different LEDs and LDRs and none of them had anything close to an appealing decay characteristic.

[enzyme00]

I have 4 of the Thomas White LPGs that I built years ago. I've never been thrilled with them...of the 4, two work pretty well and the other two don't. I've always assumed it was because of the broad tolerances of the vactrols, but I've never gotten around to fixing them because I don't like desoldering.

This was my very quick lesson on the importance of socketing anything that could be variable in DIY

The amount of time I have sunk into that project is disturbing. Too much of my life was spent building, desoldering, installing sockets, ordering different vactrols off eBay, testing them, determining that they were all crap, and then building my own DIY vactrols and determining they were crap.

I kind of like the little desoldering rope...

[enzyme00]

Nice!

A six-input mixer and a touch interface would round the system off nicely. A 16-step version of the 5-step voltage source would probably be expensive but it would be a logical development of the existing module and by my guess would sell reasonably well.

Holy crapola a touch controller would be great. I don't know why it never occurred to me that they could build a mini Thunderbird.

[kwaidan]

But this Doepfer shift level to +12v is it not to much? Is there any other voltage converter ?

It should be okay, but you might want to ask TipTop. You could also use a Doepfer A-183-3. There are other modules and a cheap DIY fix:

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