Retrosynth PPG MiniROM for Blacet Wiard Miniwave

YouTube via therealretrosynth, aka Cary Roberts of Retrosynth.com.

"This is a demo of the Retrosynth MiniROM loaded with PPG wavetables courtesy of Jason Proctor. The Miniwave is being driven from the sawtooth output of a Serge PCO scaled and offset through an audio mixer and scaling buffer. The wave select on the Miniwave is modulated by a Universal Slope Generator with gain and offset from a CV mixer. The output of the Miniwave is patched directly into the dual channel stereo mixer module for final level adjustment and then it's off to a small Roland MA-8 monitor."

Update via retrosynth in the comments:
"There are 64 waves in each PPG wavetable bank and a stock Blacet Miniwave can only do 16 waves per bank. Plus there are only 16 banks in a stock Miniwave. The board I made allows for 32 banks of 64 waves each. That's 8X more samples per ROM. Jason Proctor provided me the wavetables. I'm just the hardware monkey that made them fit in a Miniwave socket. Some pictures here: [link]"

Oakley, MOTM and Blacet Modular Synthesiser

Title link takes you to shots pulled from this auction. Details saved below.



"Custom built “one off” large format Modular Synthesiser in Mint condition and perfect working order. It has been custom built from the very best of Oakley Sound, MOTM, Blacet, Encore and Tellun System modules, with custom engraved stunning looking electric blue front panels and a solid American Oak case. It has been designed and built to the highest standards, and has two separate power supplies, a Power One 1.7Amp PSU for analog modules and a Power One 800ma PSU for the “dirtier” digital modules. This arrangement keeps the soundpath noise free.

I built this modular without regard to cost and for my own personal use, it has a wide variety of filters so that as well as making all of the usual (and unusual J )modular sounds, it will also mimic a lot of old school Analog synths – the Oakley VCO’s are based on the Minimoog core, so in conjunction with the Oakley Superladder moog filter you can get perfect Minimoog and Moog Modular sounds, or use the MOTM 440 for Pro 5 sounds, the MOTM420 for Korg MS20 sounds, The MOTM410 for Korg PS3200 sounds, the MOTM480 for Yamaha CS80, the MOTM485 for Yamaha GX1 etc. BUT it also includes 2 Blacet Miniwaves with optional PPG wavetable ROMS, so wire in a couple of the Miniwaves and use them with the MOTM440 filter and you have instant PPG Waveterm 2.3 sounds!

But there is more, it also includes some very rare modules including the Oakley Octal Resonator (Only 20 ever built!), the very highly regarded ENCORE thru zero Bode style frequency shifter and the extremely wacky Neural Agoniser, which uses two huge (and very expensive) Accutronics spring line reverb tanks to make sounds you have never heard before! The Blacet MiniWaves both have the Hylander Rom expansion boards, so each MiniWave has TEN selectable Roms instead of one or two, and there are 256 waves and 256 banks in each rom - that is a LOT of waveforms. One of the ROMs even allows the MiniWaves to act as a fully featured Quantizers!.

Here is a list of all modules:

TOP ROW
OAKLEY MidiDac Midi to CV Convertor
1 of Custom Built Noise source - produces White Noise, Pink Noise and two of three oscillator 808 type “Chime” Noise sources – great for bell tones
2 of OAKLEY VCO Modded with Switchable Octaves and Fine tune (like minimoog)
1 of Oakley VCO with standard Coarse and Fine Tune controls
2 of BLACET Mini Waves – Modded with Rom expansions, each miniwave has TEN selectable roms, instead of usual 1 or 2. Includes PPG Roms and many others.
2 of Oakley ADSR / VCA’s latest issue with extra fast envelopes and status leds
1 of MOTM 440 Voltage Controlled Filter
1 of OAKLEY SuperLadder Moog filter 1P, 4P and bandpass
1 of OAKLEY Octal Resonator resonant filter bank

BOTTOM ROW
1 of OAKLEY VC-LFO
1 of OAKLEY Sample & Hold and Slew Module
1 of OAKLEY Wavefolder
1 of ENCORE Electronics Thru Zero Frequency Shifter
1 of OAKLEY Little EG – AD and AR envelope shaper
1 of OAKLEY Triple VCA
2 of OAKLEY MultiMix – With full “Stooge” mod front panels, allow addition or subtraction of voltages
1 of MOTM 485 – Yamaha GX1 LP and HP Voltage Controlled Filter
1 of MOTM 410 – Korg PS3200 style Triple Bandpass Voltage Controlled Filters
1 of OAKLEY OMS410 Expander for MOTM410, allows external use of 3 LFO’s, extra CV’s etc
1 of MOTM 420 – Korg MS20 style LP/HP/BP Voltage Controlled Filter
1 of MOTM 480 – Yamaha CS80 type LP/HP Voltage Controlled Filter
1 of TELLUN TLN-156 Neural Agoniser – With Dual Accutronics spring reverb tanks and full front panel design.

I will include a useful selection of patch cables. Also included is a huge ring binder with operation notes, building instructions, parts schedules and circuit diagrams for all of the modules. The whole system has been recently calibrated and fully tested and is 100% working. It has had very little use and should provide years of faithful service.

This is advertised elsewhere (SOS) so I reserve the right to end the auction early. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity, not just the best sounding Modular synth available but the best looking one too! You could easily pay more for a piano and that just has one sound and doesn't look as nice either :-)

For further information the links below should be useful:
Oakley homepage: http://www.oakleysound.com/projects.htm
MOTM Homepage: http://www.synthtech.com/motm.html
Blacet Homepage: http://www.blacet.com/MW.html
Expansion board for Miniwave: http://www.hylander.com/miniwave.html
Encore Electronics: http://www.encoreelectronics.com/cont_fs1.html
Tellun Corporation: http://www.tellun.com/motm/diy/tln156/TLN-156.html"

Wiard/Blacet miniwave in MOTM Adaptor Panel

flickr by sduck409

full size

This image should give you a good idea of the size comparison between Frac and MOTM. The darker inner module is Frac and the outer MOTM.

"The front of my Wiard/Blacet miniwave. I've kept the original Blacet front panel, but added 1/4in phone jacks. It's installed into a Blacet> MOTM adaptor panel that Blacet used to sell. The row of 8 jacks at the bottom are 2 sets of 4 jack multiples."

Blacet Miniwave Frac Rack Modular

via this auction

"Blacet Miniwave with 4 Roms. Built by blacet. The minijacks were switched out for Banana Jacks. Roms included are the Eprom A, Socket Rocket, Scale Quantizer, and Morphine. The last 2 are new and still in the unopened static sheildbag."

CLICK FOR MORE »

BLACET MINIWAVE EURORACK MODDED

via this auction

"Famous Blacet Miniwave Module adapted by Plan B for use with eurorack systems. 10hp width but very deep. Will fit AS cases for sure and bottom row of a Lexington. To use in a Doepfer G6 you have to shift the bus boards to one side or the other to make it fit. Comes with PPG Wave/Prophet VS and original ROMs."

See the seller's other items for more.

A modest theme

YouTube via attorks
"A more straightforward setup is used for this theme. The Doepfer MAQ16/3 has three 6-step sequences: row 1 controls the Synthesizers.com Modular which also uses the Blacet MiniWave as sound source, row 2 the self built Modular and row 3 controls the wave of the Blacet MiniWave (you can see this in the beginning of the video). The Mellotron flutes are performed by the Roland XP-80, the minimal melody is also performed on the Clavia Nord Lead 1 and some accompanying sounds come from the Waldorf Q keyboard. All in all a true modest theme."

Blacet Miniwave w/ Expander 5 ROMs

via this auction

"Description here
Expander & ROM Description here
Includes power cable and rack screws.
Included ROMS are: DH-PPG-1, GR-PPG/P-VS, Vector 1, Bosch Gardens, Scale Quantizer

Expander is a KIT and must be assembled. The kit contains a PCB and cable only- assembler must supply parts. Support for the Miniwave and expander is available on the website shown above- no support is offered by seller. Photo below shows Miniwave with one of the included ROMs in the 2nd ROM slot. Miniwave will ship with this ROM in anti-static packaging."

Miniwave Melody

YouTube via boobtube356
"Blacet Miniwave audio output goes to Make Noise QMMG. The QMMG is modulated by Cwejman ADSR-VC2. The Miniwave bank and wave are being controlled by a pair of LFO S&H signals. The Miniwave input is a simple rising saw waveform from a Cwejman VCO-2RM. The VCO-2RM is fed a simple three note sequence using the Doepfer A-152. All adjustments are on-screen except for some fiddling with the QMMG resonance which is easily discerned."

Gregg Janman's Modular Noodlings

Gregg recently posted this MP3 on the Analog Heaven mailing list, as an example of the Metalbox 8008, a Roland TR-808 kick drum clone. The MP3 also includes a Blacet and Wiard modular. I asked him if it would be ok to post the sample as I thought it was really good, it's very clean so you can hear each instrument clearly. He gave me the go ahead and a whole lot more. Below are some notes by Gregg and a few more samples and descriptions of each. Very, very cool. Thanks Gregg!









"i post a lot of info about my modular to the black dog forum here.

i have a 37 module (and still growing but nearly complete i feel) frac
rack system with a mobius and fat controller sequencer, and a
moogerfooger mf-101 lpf. apparently it's the only frac rack modular in
japan ;)

that dimension c track is two modular voices (one blacet pwm wave into
moog filter, one blacet/wiard miniwave into blacet stonz phaser into
wiard boogie filter, both sequenced by the same cv from the mobius) plus
effects (2 blacet time machines plus a boss dimension c pedal) tweaked
and recorded live in one take and then post processed digitally with a
little reverb, compression, limiting and eq. the weirdest thing is that
if you listen to it for a while, it REALLY sounds like a grand piano!!!

here are some other modular noodlings:

1. http://darkflame.hermetech.net/Musick/Babaluma-ChineseLantern.mp3
   
   an example of putting the feedback signal of a delay through a phaser.
   the main patch is the wiard noise ring output quantised by the miniwave
   to a pentatonic scale set to "play" the vco's randomly, through the
   above mentioned effects.



2. http://darkflame.hermetech.net/Musick/OneDropDrums&Acid.mp3
   
   slow and dubby acid with the heavily modded tr-606.



3. http://darkflame.hermetech.net/Musick/Babaluma-VeryPhat.mp3
   
   an excercise in phatness.



4. http://techno.dogsquad.co.uk/darkflame/DoubleDelaySweep.mp3
   
   how BIG can those blacet time machines sound?



5. http://techno.dogsquad.co.uk/darkflame/3SquDroneEndorphin.mp3
   
   a long drone, nice but boring? would make a good "bed" for other stuff.



6. http://techno.dogsquad.co.uk/darkflame/Babaluma-TheKindThatWinds.mp3
   
   techno track, lots of modular, 606 and 8008.



7. http://darkflame.hermetech.net/Musick/Babaluma&Decadnids&Elf-Maggie-YamatoFluteMix.mp3
   
   splitting a stereo mix digitally into m/s components, then processing
   the m and s signals through DIFFERENT modular patches, back into the
   digital realm where the m and s signals are recombined into stereo...
   mmmmm....



8. http://darkflame.hermetech.net/Musick/Babaluma-HymnForJohn.mp3
   
   a complete track featured on the http://www.darkwinter.com/ album "full
   cold moon", a tribute to john balance of coil, and featuring tangerine
   dream/coil style modular sequencing.



9. http://darkflame.hermetech.net/Musick/Babaluma-TsunamiTidalWaves(PowerAmbientRemix).mp3


a full track, and one that i'm very happy with, even though it's old and
was made almost entirely in the digital domain (audiomulch on the pc). i
hope to be able to make stuff like this with just analogue gear in the
future.

anyway, feel free to post any of this stuff on your site. i'm always
looking to collaborate or master other people's stuff when my schedule
allows.

best wishes and thanks for listening and commenting, i really appreciate it!

gregg janman."

Thank you Gregg!

Synton 3000 frame with CGS Serge, Blacet and Jurgen Hailble modules

Note: Auction links are affiliate links for which the site may be compensated.

via this auction

"The Synton modules were expertly rebuilt and all the pots are a year old. The CGS Serge, Jurgen Haible Frequency shifter modules and Blacet were built and re-paneled by the same engineer who worked on the Synton 3000 only 6 months ago. It really does sounds great. If I were to keep it I would replace the PS with a nice linear supply but works fine as-is.

3017 VCF (2 pole state variable filter)
3224 Hi/Low Pass VCF
3005 EGR (ADSR)
3010 VC-EGR (VC-ADSR)
3218 INV / SLR (Dual inverter/offset and slew limiter)
3233 S&H / LFO
3235 ENV / CPR (Envelope follower, comparator, and trigger delay)
Blacet 2100 VCO
Blacet / Wiard Miniwave with Socket Rocket
CGS Serge WAD (Wilson Analog Delay)
Jurgen Haible FS-1A Frequency Shifter
CGS Serge Dual Pre-amp
Blacet Power-supply and distro unit

All housed in a 6u 13" deep steel Hammond rack."

A birds theme

YouTube via attorks
"My fiftiest video already. And we have a midget module in our midst! I bought a second hand Blacet MiniWave at the end of last year. I always wondered what the possibilities were with this module. I found the ModCan version somewhat expensive. The module was delivered last Monday. After fixing some problems with it, last night it was working. This evening I started the Doepfer sequencer with a 6 step sequence on row one and out of nothing the first sequence you hear was running out of the MiniWave using the standard bank 14. Row 3 with a 16 step sequence controls the variation of the wave of the MiniWave. Adding a high pitched 8 step sequence on row two for the self-built Modular resulted in a bird-like sound. Adding the Mellotron strings part on the Roland XP-80 was easy. Solo's on the Nord Lead 1 and the Waldorf Q Keyboard to add some variety."

Blacet / Plan B Miniwave digital VCO + both ROMs

Note: Auction links are affiliate links for which the site may be compensated.

via this auction

"Blacet Miniwave, rare Plan B eurorack conversion

• digital wavetable VCO
• both ROMs present: Eprom A + Socket Rocket
• 10 hp, 15 cm in depth
• slight rack rash but overall excellent condition"

Blacet Wiard Livewire Frac Rack Modular

Click here for shots via this auction, include hires version sent my way via the seller.

Details:
Blacet: Binary Zone, Filthy Filtre, Micro LFO, MiniWave & two frac racks w/ power supplys and power leads.
Wiard: Joystick, Joystick Axis Generator, NoiseRing.
Livewire: Frequensteiner.
The Miniwave comes with 4 eproms, they are: Miniwave Eprom A, Miniwave Socket Rocket, GR-new-256 & GR-PPG/P-VS.

Two Videos via therealretrosynth

Blacet Miniwave through Serge Variable Bandwidth Filter


Hacked Blacet/Wiard Miniwave playing PPG wavetables


YouTube via therealretrosynth. Details on each video there.

Blacet Miniwave (eurorack)

via this auction

"Blacet research miniwave, with eurorack faceplate, and eurorack power conversion kit from Plan B. No longer in production."

Blacet Research Mini Wave Discontinued

Crazy to think this is the end of an era. Before eurorack ever took off, we had Wiard and Blacet (Frac Rack format) format modules. The Mini Wave was one of the top modules. It's hard to see them go.

via the Blacet email list:

"Over the years, we have sold 100's of Grant Richter's [of Wiard] innovative MiniWave wave table module but now it's time to say goodbye to this fantastic device.

Unfortunately, some of the parts are getting hard to source.

It features 256 wave lookups with a sawtooth input or get a huge variety of distortion effects with other inputs. Plus, it's a quantizer.

Order now and get an extra 256 wave "Socket Rocket" free.

Check out the MW2090 Manual and the waveform manuals below.
http://www.blacet.com/manuals.html

****Only five Kits left, order today!****

Have a safe and enjoyable Thanksgiving!"

Blacet Suitcase, Euro Step Sequence w/ MPC

YouTube via wonkythomas
"The SEQ-02 is running the same A-B cycle all the way thru, all the variations in timing are created by programming differant "clock" patterns into the MPC.

Pitch of 2 VCOs is controlled by a mixture of Sequencer CV, MIDI/CV Pitch & Binary Zone, then quantized by the Blacet Miniwave."

Retrosynth MiniROM

You might remember the MiniROM from this video. via Retrosynth where you'll find more info including how to order the MiniRom:

"The Retrosynth MiniROM is a Blacet Mini Wave and Wiard Waveform City compatible ROM that provides eight times more waveform capacity than a traditional waveform ROM. The MiniROM can be installed in any open ROM socket on the Mini Wave or Hylander Expander. MiniROMs can be stacked with MiniROM selection handled by a panel mounted toggle or rotary switch....

The first MiniROM is available with PPG waveforms programmed by Jason Proctor. The PPG waveform set provides 32 banks of 64 waves each. A small wiring harness (provided) is soldered to the Mini Wave to facilitate access to the extended waves and banks." Blacet MiniWave.

Choices

YouTube Uploaded by attorks on May 13, 2011

"I was determined to do something different but then this sequence came up and I could not resist. The music begins with a 6-step sequence on row 1 of the Doepfer MAQ16/3 driving the Ian Fritz Teezer Through-Zero VCO which sawtooth output is modulated by the GCS Steiner filter and drives the Blacet Miniwave. This produces a modulated sound on the MiniWave. Then a 6-step sequence on row 2 of the MAQ16/3 driving the self-built Modular joins in. The Synthesizers.com Q960 sequencer is shifted by a 16-step pattern on row 3 of the Doepfer MAQ16/3 where not all steps are active. Then a Mellotron strings bass is played on the Roland XP-80 were after the Waldorf Q Keyboard comes in with a string sound. The solos are performed on the Clavia Nord Lead 1 which output is lead through a Zoom G1 effect device. I noticed a few minor glitches in the audio after I rendered the video which are also in the original audio. I will try to correct that later on for the mp3 file on my website using the multi-track recording.

You can download/see/hear the video and music from my website."

Lego Blacet Miniwave

via The Stretta Procedure

"I needed something temporary until someone comes up with a proper euro miniwave module. That brings us to: the lego enclosure."