Modal CRAFTsynth

The Lounge Other Gear
#1

Awesome

http://www.gear4music.com/Keyboards-and-Pianos/Modal-CRAFTsynth-Monophonic-Synthesizer-Kit/1RCJ

Modal Electronics is delighted to announce Modal CRAFTsynth - we believe the World’s first no soldering, self assembly, monophonic USB or battery powered synthesiser with full MIDI support through a Class Compliant USB port. Assembled in less than 10 minutes, with no tools or specialist knowledge required (not suitable for under 13 years of age), CRAFTsynth brings real synthesiser performance to a new price point and an entirely new audience of synth players.
Modal CRAFTsynth specification:

  • Monophonic DSP based self assembly synthesiser, requires no soldering or electronics skills, tools or knowledge
  • Eight front panel potentiometers for editing control, with two pages of editing functionality
  • 2 oscillators per voice
    o sine, tri, saw, pwm, noise plus FM (OSC2 modulates pitch of OSC1)
    o detune and fine detune for OSC2
  • Mixer stage for OSC levels
  • Unison / spread mode that splits the oscillators into four separate sub oscillators per oscillator
    o giving a total of eight oscillators, de-tunable for a HUGE sound
  • LFO with six destinations
    o VCA amplitude
    o filter cutoff
    o FM amount
    o OSC mix
    o PWM amount
    o pitch / frequency
  • Four LFO wave forms, each invertible
    o Sine, tri, saw, square
  • LFO auto syncs to MIDI clock if present
  • Resonant low pass filter
  • 16 recallable EG presets for ease of use
    o Soon to be released, CRAFTapp will provide full editing control of EG’s for custom envelopes which can be stored within a patch
  • 16 patch storage locations (manageable through Modal CRAFTapp)
  • Playable touch panel interface with five note keys plus controls for scale and glide time
    o Scale changes between major, minor, diatonic and blues
  • Delay and distortion (waveshaping overdrive, not bit crushing) effects
  • Headphone and line output
  • Class Compliant MIDI provided over USB connection to host computer or tablet
  • Powered by USB or optional AA battery pack
  • Modal CRAFTapp for iOS*, Macintosh and PC coming end of 2016 (subject to Apple AppStore conditions), Android support planned for Q1 2017.
    Due to ship mid-December 2016, MSRP UK £79.99 including VAT, projected US and Euro pricing TBA
4 Likes
#2

Way cool.

#3

I had a demo of one today and it sounded good , just ordered one. Seemed very powerful for the £££

#4

How they can have FM on this little thing and bigger Modal 001/002 without is crazy?
Been waiting for an FM update on these two, but doesn’t look like it will happen. Yeah they have wavetables which can get you into quite diverse digital tones, but a digital synth without FM is just silly.
This little thing could sound pretty cool

#5

Interesting design :aw: those are strange looking potentiometers

#6

Looks like Lego’s dark years during the cyberpunk '90s.

#7

Sound demo:
https://soundcloud.com/modalelectronics/modal-craft-demo-by-ty-unwin

No brainer to me, those nasty bits :smiley:

2 Likes
#8

sounds great. May grab one
Always wanted a modal. Save a couple of grand now haha

#9

haha Totally. Must buy it now.

#10

its tiny!!!

1 Like
#11

It’s so cute and cuddly

#12

Ty Unwin, said Modal plan on doing a bit of a range of stuff ala the POs and Volca. Neat with the USB port and iphone/android support.
Someone just needs to bring out a monster Sync box with USB, Midi and CV to link all this stuff up.

#13

And what he said about the sound quality compared with PO got me attention.

But i am also looking forward to the Modal Eurorack modules.

#14

Anyone remember it’s grandfather Zira with 48 digital waves, monster sub and analogue filter…?

1 Like
#16

I spoke to them about the ‘Eurorack’ modules on SuperBooth 17. Basicly they cancelled “Eurorack”. The reason was that their dealer network was not interested… They have the impression it will only sell at the first wave release and after that sales going dead… They only want mass products that sell a lot??? So weird they say that with those high end poly synths.

I was really interested in the ‘Eurorack’ but also in for the polysynths. But after this conversation and the stories i’ve read of bugs in the 002/008 on Dutch Synthforum i lost my interest in modal.

1 Like
#17

Sounds like they ran out of cash to me.

1 Like
#18

I would have thought they would be appealing to more ‘mass market’ by going into Euro, much more so than their current boutique synth line?
I agree that more likely they are maybe in financial trouble.
Hope not. Great forward thinking company.
I had a modal 001 for a while, it was quite a good product, but had major stability issues, and considering the price I was disappointed overall.
With the prices they are charging they need to tighten up the software driving their synths, but this all costs a lot of money I presume, and must be hard for a small company like Modal.

1 Like
#20

new craft rhythm machine announced

does some nice things to samples too.
and people doing youtube vids that pronounce the name of the synth properly wont annoy me.
they always seem so smug (unless theyre swedish of course).
and i cant pronounce it properly …

http://www.modalelectronics.com/craft/#rhythm

#23

If it’s priced like the modal synth about 99$ I would definitely be in for one. The ideal behind these is pretty cool, I’d love to have a line of these. And maybe eventually a way to sock more than one into creating a single synth.

#24

Anybody actually using these with Elektron machines? Can they be synced?

They seem to be less popular than Teenage Engineering…

The drum sampler looks nice