Pittsburgh Modular Microvolt 3900

That’s good to know. It’s not really an issue as I managed to get some great saw patches that were plenty loud yesterday but just wanted to make sure there wasn’t something wrong with my unit. Thanks for checking! The fold and pulse are shockingly fat sounding!

If you’re not using the external in, routing from headphone jack and turning up ext levels can add a little oomph.

How I wish they had made the mix pot and random speed cvable.

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I messed around with that trick and got some very nice sounds, amazing how deep the bass can get on this… Probably the bassist synth I own I think!

I’m busy over the next few days and then have to finish putting my studio together again but I’ll definitely share some of the stuff I do with it when I get around to it, it seems there’s not a huge amount of demos of this thing.

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Analog sine wave is not that common either.

I think it’s a really good price, they obviously made a few sacrifices with mults and mixers and cv ins but the stuff it can do for the price is pretty ridiculous and I’ve probably barely scratched the surface. I hope they stop making them soon so no-one else can have them :stuck_out_tongue:

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“I hope they stop making them soon so no-one else can have them” haha I know that feeling… I’ve thought the same with other gear before but I also want pittsburgh modular to get more credit for how great a piece of gear it is!

Yeah the analog sine wave is great, very beefy sounding which is nice, cool that it has the harmonic mode too, not something I’ve ever seen anywhere else.

My experience with semi modular so far is that you’re always left wanting a few more (____) and this too seems to be the case for modular in general haha… I was quite happy when I got a Motas-6 as this pretty much scratched the modular itch for me.

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Here’s a simple demo I made some time ago and forget to share. It’s just the MV through Softube Clouds, turn your speakers down…

This is just something I came up with while sampling hundreds of patches into Digitakt, It’s just the SV1b and Microvolt, no processing apart from what’s in DT. It was more just to take a break and test some of the samples. Though it was recorded through a very old Spirit Folio.

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It is cool !

Pure noise, i love it!

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How is it going the microvolt after 2 month of use?

I need to decide between Mv life forms or MM32 Dfam combo…

I’ve not actually used it nearly as much as I’d like to yet… I bought it as I got a deal I couldn’t ignore but around the same time I got my second Motas-6 so in the little bit of free time I’ve had recently, I’ve generally focused on them.

What I will say though is that the microvolt is incredible for bass… it sounds very tight / punchy in the low end. I really like the wavefolding on it too. I will take some time away from my Motas’s someday and really focus on the microvolt and I’ll be sure to chime in when I have.

So I’ve been having a good play with the Microvolt today and any slight doubts I had about it have gone!

It’s a beast! I doubt there are many synths out there that can output bass like this thing can and it can access a pretty huge range of timbres between it’s various waveforms, it’s unique sounding filter and the various ways you can distort it / feedback it and then you have a good range of unique modulation options on top of that.

if you’re trying to decide between the moog or pittsburgh stuff, I think you just need to ask yourself if you want those classic moog sounds or if you’d rather have access to more experimental sounds? I also think you’d generally have more utility (atleast in the form of modulation) via the pittsburgh stuff but then again, I’m not experienced with Moog stuff so I can’t really help you there.

Anyway… Back to more patching :slight_smile:

Nice one!
And is the quality good? I read some people complaining about the quality of buttons and fader?

the buttons are nice, the caps can pop off if you catch them considerably hard. The faders feel nice to me too, I’ve heard people say they’re wobbly and there is a slight bit of wobble but personally I feel like this is to be expected as if they weren’t they’d be completely flush with the holes in the panel and this would lead to other more serious manufacturing issues. The little pots are as you’d expect and they’re the same as you’d find on any other synth using these pots (like volcas or other many other semi modulars)

Personally I think it’s a very nicely built synth that has a quality feel to it but one must also keep in mind that they’ve crammed ALOT of features in a small space so there’s going to be a trade off in regards to how solid it feels. a M32 or DFAM is going to have a nicer quality to it which I can understand being important if you’re going to be tweaking it a lot live but as long as you’re not using it completely recklessly, I don’t see the build of the microvolt ever being an issue.

Got it

I think it is a sound design tool less performance oriented for the reason you just mentioned.

A DFAM and MV looks a nice combo though

The faders are suuuuuper playable. And fun.

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yeah the DFAM is very appealing, it’s got such a juicy sound to it and I’d love to own it one day but probably can’t justify it for some years now haha…

And yeah I think it’s probably better for sound design than performance although it definitely can still be used for performance, the faders don’t feel like they’d break or anything but it’s also generally somewhat cramped so yeah… that’s not ideal for live.

Edit: And yeah I agree the faders are very playable, they have a very smooth action to them and still feel very precise despite being quite small.

You mean between Microvolt, SV-1 Lifeforms or M32? If so, the main feature the M32 has that those two Pittsburghs don’t is a sequencer. Otherwise, AFAIK, the MV and SV-1 have more features / functions than the M32. The SV-1 is very well built. IMO it sounds wonderful.

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I think i prefer MV3900 to SV1b atm. That’s only personal based on me being based on the weird percussive side of things, I’m not saying one is better than the other. You defo have to work the percussive sound a lot more on the SV1b, but they are still incredible when you get them, so punchy.

I think you’ll get a lot more mileage from the SV1 than the Moog. Plus the SV1 can sound moogish with the LP filter.

Is it possible to correct the spelling and name of the thread title to Pittsburgh Modular Microvolt 3900? Though I only just noticed…

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:man_facepalming:

Good call. Sorrryyyyy. Done.

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Only took me two and a half years to notice, mind.

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