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le lambin wrote:I have never heard or seen of anything like that- integrated power supply and what looks like some kind of simple patch bay? I hope it actually works like it should- interesting find!

It didn’t take long for Blood Mountain’s description of the Tasty Chips Integral to woo me into ordering one- Perfect Circuit is having a 10% off sale on most things and the Integral was in stock, and one thing led to another.

I also just received a Maneco Labs Small Nimbus today, a pedal version of everyone’s favorite granular darling, Clouds. I haven’t seen anyone really using anything from Maneco, and I wasn’t into euro rack when Clouds swiffered the nation, so it’s all still new and fun to me. Haven’t messed with the alternate firmware yet but the pedal is fun and seems high quality. And it’s way cheaper than a Tomkat Cloudy. I’m kind of surprised there’s not a mainstream clone of Clouds in pedal format?

The small ones are nice too, might want a couple of them too. The I/O is just for the VU meter lights on the back, but it's not necessary, it will react to nearby sound without the input being used too. There might be a buffer in there anyway...a tuner would have been more useful as an electronic feature but this is cool too, I like the idea of the pedalboard itself having a visual audio input indicator. Also it's just good ol' blinkenlites gas, it's been too long. There are other boards with integrated power supplies (Azor & Aklot), but the power options are not as good.

Walrus has a couple of cloudsy type things, but they're not exact clones, the Lore and Fable.

The Microcosm is basically the clouds of pedals, isn’t it?

dub wrote:The Microcosm is basically the clouds of pedals, isn’t it?

Yes, but like most of the Hologram stuff, it can be finicky in terms of operation (user based, perhaps), and less granuar-ly than an actual Clouds. I do also remember ppl complaining of a line level issue, but maybe firmware corrected that?

Haven't thought of one in a while, and now that I know the Maneco eggists, I mite bundle up for onnadoez instead

dub wrote:The Microcosm is basically the clouds of pedals, isn’t it?

The microcosm is weird- it’s almost like if Moog from 5 years ago made a beginner friendly pedal to introduce new musicians to granular- kind of how the mother 32 was intended to introduce people to modular concepts. Most of the algorithms aren’t actually granular, but are granular-adjacent, but produce a similar sound. Also, I feel like the entire pedal is based around locking the effects to a common tempo that you can sync via midi or play along with, thereby making the effects more “musical.” It’s surprisingly limited in its tweakability- it’s more like a sampler of curated granularesque presets that will always play nice with rhythmic playing. But man, when you have a sequence going on a synth and you turn the synced microcosm on doing its pitch shifted micro loop thing, it’s magic.

Clouds in my limited experience is opposite of curated- you can get pretty and ugly sounds depending on how you are using it. Personally I like that-it leads to some unexpected places.

Update on the Maneco small nimbus- when not using freeze, this thing can be a very gnarly delay. I’m kind of surprised how crazy the oscillation can get- distorted, fucked up, out of control bass flubby wubbies and all kinds of digital weirdness. I put a compressor after it and was able to create really interesting noisy walls of sound that never really got fatiguing or harsh to listen to. I wonder if the OG clouds could do this? I’ve not seen every demo out there but this was a very welcome surprise.

The Eurorack bug bit. Got a Behringer copy of the Roland 555 for a few utilities and a Qu-Bit Bloom for ambientness. My partner really loves the Eurorack thing but we are definitely going in very different directions. I sort of building my ideal early Gary Numan Minimoog/Polymoog hybrid with a lot of oscillators and filters and LFOs. She is all in on the Mutable/Qu-Bit/etc generative ambient thing.

le lambin wrote:It didn’t take long for Blood Mountain’s description of the Tasty Chips Integral to woo me into ordering one- Perfect Circuit is having a 10% off sale on most things and the Integral was in stock, and one thing led to another.

Sorry.
Have you received it yet?

Well the big boy won't be here 'til friday, and the small ones had next day shipping, sooo...
Metal boards of metallic metalness:

They're great I love them, and I predict they will be very popular. Competing products should be getting interesting by next namm too. The feet are nice and sturdy, and it is a very durable folded aluminum. They also come with a voltage doubling y-cable to get an 18v connection out of two 9v sockets.

Those look nice, but can you defeat the LEDs from reacting to the audio signal? I wouldn't want that.

There is a knob underneath with the power sockets to adjust the sensitivity of the onboard mic; all the way down turns it off, only a slight turn is needed to activate it, and diming it keeps it mostly lit. It seems to react better to outside audio than direct input too, fwiw.

Blood_mountain wrote:

le lambin wrote:It didn’t take long for Blood Mountain’s description of the Tasty Chips Integral to woo me into ordering one- Perfect Circuit is having a 10% off sale on most things and the Integral was in stock, and one thing led to another.

Sorry.
Have you received it yet?

Yes! I haven’t had time to mess with it yet though, hopefully this weekend.

le lambin wrote:

Blood_mountain wrote:

le lambin wrote:It didn’t take long for Blood Mountain’s description of the Tasty Chips Integral to woo me into ordering one- Perfect Circuit is having a 10% off sale on most things and the Integral was in stock, and one thing led to another.

Sorry.
Have you received it yet?

Yes! I haven’t had time to mess with it yet though, hopefully this weekend.

Mine seems to be floating in the ether of international shipping, but hopefully I'll have it next week. Curious to hear your initial thoughts when you get a chance to play it.

Big board is here and I'm waiting on the voodoo labs reverse polarity cable for eventide pedals. The power options are robust! Ambitious even. I'm going to run two dirt pedals at 18v, Mooer Radar at 12v, plus the Pitchfactor, Trio+ and FreqOut, three voltage-hungry monsters on the 500ma sockets.

Waiting on a few other synthy/grainy goodies too...Pigtronix Resotron (more 18V), Bananana Mandala, and TC June 60; my old boards and stand are being converted into drum/pedular synth type configurations.

In boring overdrive news, I got a TC Zeus, for a taste of that germanium Klon hype. Interesting form factor, width of a 1590b with the height of a mini. They've only released a few this size so far, the Bucket Brigade looks like a nice one too. Also got a Catalinbread Formula 5F6 (black label version), which sounds amazing straight into the interface and doesn't need a cab sim. They call it an overdrive but it makes a great preamp all by itself.
https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0370/ ... manual.pdf

the Guv'nor 2 came in. this means everything is in except the preordered So High So Low which is delayed because there's a war on where the builder lives and the Demedash T-120 that's tied up being repaired at Demedash Central up in the wilds of the Canadian prairie. i really wish they'd get here so my boards can officially be done. meanwhile i have the Guv'nor, the Höfner Fuzz, and the Seppuku Memory Loss to play with. i doubt anything's getting kicked off the board at this point, but you never know.

Coming: 1989 ampeg svt-ii non pro

A Source Audio Dimension Reverb came in the mail recently- I tried a Ventris a while ago and really liked the room reverb, but I almost never play stereo, and the Ventris is expensive, so I wondered if the Dimension could sound similar in mono. Some clipping issues aside, it sounds really good! I can't remember if it sounds exactly like the Ventris, but it has a really great room sound, and some other cool reverbs. I really like one of the spring sounds- it doesn't sound like a real spring, but it sounds awesome it its own weird way. Sounds good going into dirt too- and it was really cheap! I can recommend it to anyone looking for something in the Boss RV-6/MXR Reverb territory.