Erica Synths Drum Sequencer

mybud

Well-known member
Build Rating
5.00 star(s)
My Christmas present from my belovèd (my request, of course). More details here.

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Board looks cramped at first sight but doable if one manoeuvres it to accommodate the iron with due care. They provided a full set of leaf sockets for the ICs, which I replaced with better quality precision DIL sockets. I've had too many bummers with leaf sockets to trust them in such a build FWIW.

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They only supply kits for this range but well and good because it has some obscure (at least to me) parts: the cherry keys and 1.8mm LEDs (white button assemblies in last pic). Not exactly a snip at 110 Euros, but I had some good luck with customs who cleared the parcel as an ordinary letter, hence very low duty fees.

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I assembled the whole kit and kaboodle and found voice 1 not functioning. After the initial ice-cold feelings of frustration and self-doubt, I inspected the board with more care and found that I'd been over-miserly with solder on two switch connections in that part of the circuit. Retouched these and problem solved.

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This shot exposes my somewhat grubby finger marks but it looks fine in the rack.

While awaiting its arrival, I read the manual very carefully and must say that I learnt a lot from the designer Moritz Klein's copious explanatory notes. I've been wanting to run an analogue 808-based drum machine setup for a long time and this doesn't disappoint. As MK himself says, the modulation possibilities (two LFOs and CV out from each of the four voices) give it an 'organic' feel. With four different gates and CVs available, one could even use it as a melodic sequencer for tuned percussion or whatever strikes one's fancy.

Hugely relieved in the end that all functions as intended.

Thanks for reading as always and wishing you every joy with your projects.
 
This is really cool, I am trying to find a project to do with my son who is a keyboard player, this sound like it would be a really good accompaniment project! [edited: I see that there are output modules needed to use the drum triggers, will keep investigating, curious what you are triggering on the ouput? Any thoughts on some simple ways to be able to enjoy and start tinkering with the kit are appreciated! Forgive my obvious naïveté here, total noob on the synth/sequencer front.]
 
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This is really cool, I am trying to find a project to do with my son who is a keyboard player, this sound like it would be a really good accompaniment project! I don't know enough about synth systems, but it seems with onboard LFO like this, it can operate as standalone in to amp/speaker system, is that correct?, ...or do you need more"ins and outs" connected to it to get useful sound?
Thanks.

Unfortunately, this isn't your best option TMM, because it only produces events (gates and control voltages, so no audio per se). And it runs off Eurorack +-12V power, so not simple to bring into the audio world. So yes you would need 'ins' (oscillators, what have you) to make any sound.
 
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