I had a Clouds, Morphagene, Batumi, and a Pamela’s New Workout, all going into Rosie for the output. If you aren’t familiar with all of those, it’s okay. They’ll all be discussed over the course of this journey into modular synths. I guess that first attempt was more of an external effects processing unit than an instrument to play, but I enjoyed it a lot.
Time went by and the modules sat in my rack-mount desk unit, untouched for weeks at a time. I couldn’t justify having them just sit there thinking that one day I’ll need them, so I cleaned them up, listed them on Reverb, took what I could get, and moved on. I’ve never been one to regret selling things, especially if they just sit around unused for as long as those modules did, but I do kind of wish I had held onto them a little while longer. Oh well.
I’ve spent the last several months doing everything in the box, using all virtual instruments and plugins, and haven’t touched a physical instrument, outside of jamming on an acoustic guitar with friends, in… I don’t even know. A while. There’s nothing wrong with that mindset and workflow, I’ll most likely continue that way until the pendulum starts to swing back and physical instruments and hardware get reintegrated into my process. For now, I’m starting to daydream about modules and patch cables and knobs and sliders.
This time I feel more inclined to build something standalone that I can set up on a desk beside me and get lost in, while still including some modules for effects processing like I used to have. I’m going to take my time and be a lot more intentional about learning synthesis and what modules I need, or would like to have. As a long-time musician I’ve used plenty of synthesizers over the years but they’ve all been self-contained units. I’ve never built a synthesizer piece by piece, which is essentially what modular synths are. I understand the basics but in the world of modular there’s mountains of information and capability that I want to make sure I understand and utilize properly.
If you’re going to build a modular synth system, the first thing you need might be obvious, or it might not be. You need a case.
In my first go-round, before I had everything rack mounted in a 3u frame in my desk, I had a TipTop Mantis case.
In eurorack, everything is measured in HP. The larger a module is, the more HP it takes up. The TipTop Mantis contains two rows of 104 HP, which means you can fit a total of 208 HP worth of modules in the case. That is honestly plenty of room, and the Mantis was perfectly fine for me.
Some of the drawbacks of the Mantis that I felt at the time were 1) the lack of a lid that allows for the modules to stay patched but covered to protect from dust or pet hair or whatever, 2) the unit itself was plastic, which doesn’t affect much of anything but it didn’t feel high quality, and 3) the lack of any onboard input or output options.
Now that I know I’m committing to this and wanting to put together something that I’ll use long-term, I wanted to pick a nicer case with some of the features that I felt the Mantis was missing - at least for my purposes.
I ended up choosing the Intellijel 7u case, which features two rows of 104 HP - just like the Mantis - but also one 104 HP row of 1u tiles, which are mostly used for utility purposes so you can save space in the larger rows to use for other things.
I’m happy with the purchase, though I will say the overall build quality of the Intellijel case wasn’t quite what I was expecting. For the price I was anticipating a sturdier metal build, but the case is quite a bit thinner than I would have thought. I feel like one drop or something falling on it will dent the case pretty easily. Not that I’m going to be dropping anything onto the case, or dropping the case itself, but for $700 I would have hoped for a slightly thicker metal. Even latching the cover onto the bottom of the case bends the metal a bit. It also seems very prone to scratches and blemishes, again not that I’m going to be mishandling the case but the point of a case like this is to be able to put a patch together, cover the modules, and transport the case to a performance or recording session. The build quality of the case doesn’t seem to lend itself to travel like that, and is more for just keeping everything covered at home if needed.
I know what I’d like to put together in this case and I’m excited to walk through why I’ll be purchasing what I’ve selected, how I’m going to work it into my workflow, and document the exploration.
