Re: [motm] wishful thinkng: MOTM Vactrol VCF (Buchla 292)
2002-03-04 by jhaible@debitel.net
> me like to see a MOTM filter similar to the Buchla 292? As you Buchla heads > probably know, the Vactrols in the 292 give it that wonderful "plucked, > woody sound." I have the MOTM 410 VCF which utilizes the Vactecs, but this > module is set up more like a phaser than a conventional VCF. > I thought it would be great to have a simple Vactrol based VCF with the > typical FREQ, RES, controls. Any ideas? Personally I love vactrols in phasers and in the 410, but I *hate* them in ordinary filters. I once built a clone of the Buchla Lowpass Gate (switchable from VCF to VCA and something in between), and it has Vactrols, and it has these "certain qualities". But it is so outright *annoying* when you want to do snappy envelopes and it's just not possible. You just cannot cut off this darn release tail. Any ideas? Two: (1) Get a fairly good approximation with a VCLAG in the CV path to the filter. This is not a perfect emulation, because the Vactrol's time constant is nonlinear, but try it and see if it isn't good enough for your application. (And, as the LAG is a VCLAF, you can also emulate some of the nonlinearities by feeding the CV to the VCLAG's signal input *and* the VCLAG's CV input.) (2) Rather than making each and every filter in a Vactrol-based and a Vactrol-less version, we could make an extra "VACTROLIZER" Module: A CV processor that runs the CV thru a real Vactrol circuit to get a CV output signal for modulating any filter you want. The 2nd option is something I have not built yet, but which I will surely do in the near future. JH.