Obscure Semi Modulars

I really love instruments like the Pluto Synth, the Lorre Mill Double Knot/Mosstone, the Bastl softpop 2 etc. They’re so fun and unique!

Wondering if there’s any other lesser known semi modulars anyone can recommend in this thread.

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hordijk’s bilppoo box is the holy grail

whimsical raps/mannequins and meng qi have a semi modular in the works that will be amazing no doubt

the folktek stuff like mescaline.

this was posted to mw today and has some obscure semi modulars which i don’t know anything about

https://www.modwiggler.com/forum/download/file.php?id=173300&mode=view

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Destiny+ banana semi modular are pretty serious :smile:

And all the ciat-lombard stuff are very nice.

https://ciat-lonbarde.net/

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Love these suggestions! Keep em coming!

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I’ve never heard of hordijk’s bilppoo box till now. What makes it legendary/holy grail?

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I only have its descendant, the Benjolin, as a Eurorack module, but it does things with runglers (Hordijk’s own particular sort of FM / feedback CMOS shift register chaos generator) that nothing else can quite achieve, as long as you’re not necessarily looking for melody or tonality.

One semi-modular that’s now probably passing into legend and perhaps obscurity is the MFB Kraftzwerg II, which I have an example of, that has triple oscillators, a shedload of patching options and can sound huge.

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Yeah! Kraftzwerg II was great!
It is sad that MFB synths are not in production anymore.

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@szzdz mentioned Meng Qi — I adore the Wing Pinger (and it’s smaller sibling product, Wingie). This video is one of my favorites, Wing Pinger with Serge modular:

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EML-101 is great. I don’t use mine as much as I should, but that’s my fault.

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Two oddballs, not strictly semi modulars, but patchable with dupont pin cables:

Bastl Bitranger, totally nuts.
Olegtron 4060, basically a divider chip with a built in oscillator but capable of some very interesting stuff.

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This is apparently a thing:

And it’s in stock!

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I’ve discovered Twin Tropiques this week, I’m very tempted
https://www.twintropiques.com/

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i own a 16psyche. Destiny+ makes the most experimental devices since CL. far from your typical rehash of yesteryear. they are designed and produced by kirkis aka Destiny71z and former member of Floating Points.

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I mean they’re not obscure at all but my favorite 3 by far are the following
Dfam
Taiga
0-Coast
I’ve had obscure ones before but weren’t able to go the distance (Ciat, LEP Loop, Herbs and Stones, Blipp, Wing Pinger, Bastl Boxes) and were traded off. However, naturally your mileage will vary.

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Agreed. I started to write about it but thought it was not that esoteric. But it’s indeed super fun and has an awesome, raw and dirty sound.
Edit : got nostalgic and found a video when I was touring with a Krafrzwerg and a mc-202. Good old times ! (Skip around 7:00)

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Ekdahl Polygamist

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This is one of the most interesting semi-modular instruments I’ve seen, although the designer builds them by hand and they’re fairly hard to come by:

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I own both the 16 psyche and cz cells and I highly recommend them but also, they’re very deep and can initially be very confusing because things either aren’t at all or aren’t very clearly labelled and something may seem layed out unintuitively but I think the opposite is true.

They’re not too hard to come buy if you buy them new, you just need to get in touch with the designer and there’ll be a wait list to get on which only takes some months between cycles.

I do think people need to manage their expectations with them though, while they’re capable of what people call music, they naturally want to push beyond that into something like free jazz or noise…

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Beautiful jam/composition @chapelierfou! :slightly_smiling_face:
You’re right: Kraftzwerg was a really cool sounding synth.
A friend of mine has sold Its own recently, I should have bought from him… (but I’m saving for the Voltage Lab 2)

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Haven’t seen these mentioned on here ever, and not really semi-modular (though could be if you wanted), but probably of interest all the same. A whole world of weird, all DIY and based around cheap and easily available components.

http://www.sdiy.org/rfeng/lunetta.html

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