Blofeld love

I feel like the way the menu flaws on the Blofeld pushes me to try new things, FM for example, it’s available on almost every other page, you just have to add a bit of it to see what happens, right?

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I have been using program change in multi mode. It works well, and the OT program change is linked to parts, so that’s the thing to have in mind when programming.
If you change the value of the program, you need to reset the OT state (with a double or tripple press of the Stop button)
Quite a nice combo, OT and the Blo. 6 lfo’s for 8 parts. And you can layer the parts on the blofeld itself. By setting for example part 1 and 2 to midi channel 1 they are both receiving on that channel, and you can set the transpose and detune per part!
Big stuff.

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I wasn’t suggesting I’d do it myself. That’s what friends are for! :diddly:

I know the SPDIF out mod is not everyone’s cup of tea, but I want to try it. I do love the blofeld architechture, but something about the sound of it, it always finds its way back to the shelf after a while.

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me too. my experience is that the synth covers nearly the whole frequency-spectrum so that even the AR has no place to breath. Very powerful indeed!

Perfect Circuit has Blofelds listed new at $400 this weekend. That’s a very tempting price and I remember wanting a general purpose poly/soundscape machine… Still considering though. It might just be more worth it to me to fall back on software or iPad to do this ‘fill in the synthesis holes’ thing I need.

Blofeld is very good synth for the price,i have mininova,korg,and the waldorf blofeld is more deep synth and it sound better than mininova,
For sure blofeld is one classic must have synth :slight_smile:

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I know this is a two year old post, with almost 150 replies, so I’m not holding my breath, but I am very interested to know more about how you changed the knobs. My blokeys is amazing, however my fingers slip off the encoders all the time.

I would love to replace them with some squishy rubber knobs

Thanks.

I had a micro q back in the day - i really liked its sound - but i hated to program it because of the rack interface it was not good for desktop operation. The micro Q had a lot more outputs, and it had inputs - even usable as an FX machine.
2nd hand a blofeld is cheap - 270€ - i still miss the micro Q somehow, maybe i give it another shot.

I dont remember - can a sound in a multiprogramm be controlled by CC macros ?

The Elektron Ones fit fine and cure the issue, i really really struggle with this too, especially after you develop a light touch to spin the very sensitive Elektron encoders … however, the Elektron ones would sit about 4mm too high and reveal the hole in the Waldorf chassis, not so pro looking

Your alternative is to put grippy tape around the knob or spray them with a matte textured lacquer or find a heat shrink pipe and shrink that on, then trim the top … again, all not very pro

The Elektron grey makes a nice match, so you could (if serious and had acquired those knobs) reduce the height of the blofeld encoder shaft to allow the soft-touch Elektron knobs to sit flush - do any of this at your own risk of course

Or source other replacements which are not so very very slippy - it’s the one weak link of the blofeld imho

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Of course you can.
For each of your parts (“instruments”) you need to assign a MIDI channel.
This way you can control each part for notes but also for CCs.

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I had a look in the online manual - one can control each channel with the selected CC, but there is no macro function to manipulate several things at once. But you could use for example the breath control CC as modulation source in your patch, and then use it for several targets. (LFO multiplier, AMP envelope etc.)

I currently compare specs with the old access virus B (which has more i/o) but the wavetable synthesis seemed to have bugs.

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Oh I didn’t get the macro part, my bad.

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Were you looking for “Ctrl. W…Z”? You can assign 4 CC numbers and use them as mod sources.

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I bought a Blofeld last week. I didn’t really know what to expect as I had heard such mixed reviews, but at the price (£279 I think I paid) it seemed worth a go. I have to say I was utterly blown away the first time I switched it on and started going through the presets. Such a punchy and dynamic sound! After about an hour with the manual and fiddling around I was pretty comfortable with programming it and made some really nice pads and fx (which is the role I was hoping it would perform in my setup). Haven’t even got into multimode yet.

My only slight gripe is the way the DSP is handled so that you never really know how much polyphony you’re going to get with a patch. You just suddenly find you’ve run out of notes.

But all in all, what a fantastic box. If they were selling it at twice the price, I really wouldn’t be surprised, or think it were particularly overpriced. Considering the Blofeld (desktop) is roughly the same price as the Mininova, and is vastly superior in terms of flexibility and sound quality, I think it’s an utter steal.

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Not sure, but can’t you just assign all the modulation slots to be controlled by the modulation wheel, then control the modulation wheel CC from the OT? This way you have a single knob on the OT controlling multipla parameters on the Blofeld. The limitation is that you can’t assign parameters from different parts…

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i grabbed a 2nd hand one this week , £170 , seemed like a good price.

the knobs are quite stiff but it seems to be well built and sounds nice.

About 10 voices or less if you program the shit out of it. Combine wavetables with FM and comb-filter + drive and Fx and you are pretty on the edge of voices.

I found out that less is more because of it’s powerful sound-engine. Two osc’s/patch are enough.

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what do you mean by that?

If you are in multi mode you can only control parametres for each part, you can’t control the modulation wheel for all parts simultanously.
It would be great if you could…

If you put some parts on one midi channel, then it should be possible. But you need to assign the patches on the keyboard … yeah… proper mapping will do it!