Division6 Business Card Synth

US It's business time ! 23/08/23

New to us, but posted a while back; this little business card synth from Synthrotek is incredibly well designed and surprisingly feature rich! It looks very similar in stature to the Korg Monotron synth range, but goes much further in terms of synthesis possibilities. It's available on Tindie as a kit for an absolutely bargain price of $45. Here are some of the features:

Featues:

Pulse, square, triangle, and sawtooth waves

Glide

2 LFOs with pulse, square, saw, triangle and ramp shapes

Attack / Decay

Low-pass filter

Sample and Hold

Manual gate trigger (can be locked on)

Course and fine-tune controls

Controls:

S&H Button: Enables Sample & Hold, which disables the external CV IN jack and uses LFO1 and LFO2 to determine oscillator pitch. LFO1 sets the sample rate (SHAPE is ignored for this), and LFO2 is the wave that gets sampled.

GATE Button: Manually turns on the gate so sound comes out of the synth. This control is momentary, but you can latch it on by tapping the S&H button while holding the GATE button down.

COARSE TUNE: Adjusts the pitch of the oscillator up or down in large increments

FINE TUNE: Adjusts the pitch of the oscillator up or down in fine increments

SHAPE: Changes the shape of the wave produced by the main oscillator (VCO). Turning this control fully CW gives you a triangle wave. Start turning it CCW takes you through sawtooth/ramp, then at about the 12:00 position you get a square wave. Continue turning it CCW and you get several higher duty cycle square waves.

GLIDE: Adjusts the rate at which the pitch of the VCO takes to go between pitches (whether changed by the COARSE TUNE knob or CV IN). Fully CCW causes the pitch to react almost instantly, while fully CW makes it take its sweet time.

LFO 1 / LFO 2 SHAPE: Changes the shape of the waves produced by the low-frequency oscillators (LFOs). The shapes are similar to those of the VCO, except that the LFOs have sawtooth/ramp waves that go both up and down (since you can actually hear the difference at LFO rates).

LFO 1 / LFO 2 RATE: Controls how fast the LFOs go.

LFO -> VCO: Routes the two LFOs to control the pitch of the main oscillator. The 12:00 position is basically "off", and the LFOs have no effect on pitch. Start turning the control CCW and LFO1 starts changing the pitch of the VCO. Maximum effect is at about 10:00. Continuing to turn the control starts to bring in LFO2 as well. All the way CCW gives you full effect from both LFO1 and LFO2.

Turning the control CW from 12:00 does essentially the same thing, but brings in LFO2 first, then LFO1.

This might seem like kind of a weird control, but it gives you quite a bit of routing flexibility with one knob. You can have no pitch modulation, LFO1, LFO2, LFO1 with a little LFO2, or LFO2 with a little LFO1.

LFO -> VCA: Routes the two LFOs to control the amplitude of the oscillator. (See LFO -> VCO control description above for more information about how the control works.)

ATTACK: Controls how fast the audio amplitude fades in when the gate is triggered. CCW is fast and CW is slow.

DECAY: Controls how fast the audio amplitude fades out when the gate is released. CCW is fast and CW is slow.

VOLUME: Controls the overall volume of the signal coming from AUDIO OUT.

FILTER: Changes the cutoff frequency of an analog low-pass filter. Turn the knob fully CW and all frequencies (that you can hear) are let through. Start turning it CCW and the high frequencies start getting cut off, until the sound becomes muddy / muffled. Use in conjunction with the SHAPE control to get the tonal quality you are looking for.

More info on the Tindie listing: https://www.tindie.com/products/synthrotek/division-6-business-card-synthesizer-kit/?mc_cid=b74c67e095&mc_eid=0275a1abfe

About the author [midierror]: midierror makes nifty Max For Live devices, innovative music hardware, award winning sample packs and hosts a podcast speaking to people in the music world.