MOTM VCA overdrive

[Dan Higdon]

I (finally) got my PAiA MIDI->CV controller finished, and was able
to take Wally from the realms of sci-fi noise maker to real musical
instrument.  (No more drones for him!  :-)

At any rate, this gave me a lot of extra freedom to play Wally like
a "real" synth, and I made one interesting discovery about my
MOTM VCA module.  Aside from being dead-clean (from a 
noise perspective), this little guy can overdrive like a demon!
I don't know if it was designed that way, but if I hit it with a bit
too much control voltage, it starts to clip in a *very* sweet way.

This sort of thing might be old news to the rest of you, but
for me it was a revelation, and it sounds MUCH nicer than
overdriving my Mackie or StudioQUAD ins.  :-)  In fairness, I
haven't tried pumping the signal through my tubefuzz (Anderton
 style), and I don't own any real tube-gear (yet), so maybe I could
get better distortion sounds.  (I've played with distortion effects
on my digitals, but their effect is largely uninspiring to my ear.)
This distortion sounds more like a "blasting" brass instrument
than a guitar amp, but that may be a function of the waves I'm
feeding it more than the circuit.

At any rate, to sum up:  MOTM VCAs may be quiet, but you can
goose them into a less polite personality.  I can't wait for the
preamp/env follower/moog filter!

(The MOTM line has convinced me to switch my existing modules
away from banana jacks to 1/4".  It just gets too annoying trying to
mix the two.  <sigh>  It won't be cheap or easy, but I think it's the
right thing to do for me.)

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hdan at charybdis.com
"Trust not the monkey, nor his clever schemes" - hdan