Cyndustries/ Cyndustries "Buchla" Quad Lowpass Gate (25-Nov-03 )
by Pashmina
(originally posted at The Gas Station)

According to Ms Webster herself, she sought Buchla's permission before producing this module, which is pretty cool & classy IMO. You can probably imagine that I was really looking forward to this one, and I'm not dissapointed, I must admit.

I've never used any Buchla gear, & probably never will, so I don't know how closely it emulates the sonics & response of the original, but it does certainly have a really characterful and captivating sound, 'whippy' vactrol response and all. I had expected the lowpass mode to have a kind of flat filter response, but I was suprised and pleased to find that there is actually a kind of fixed low resonance in that mode, or that's how it sounds anyway. The gate (VCA) and mixed/combi modes are interesting and I suspect I'll use them more in time, but it's the lowpass mode that's pleasing me most at the moment, and I must confess I can't leave it alone.

Really, this is a very simple thing to use, but it just sounds so nice that I can see myself using it in all my modcan format patching. Having four of them in one panel is useful as well. The CV input doean't have an attenuator, but several Modcan modules, incuding the "Moog"-style filter and the Dual Crossfader have simple passive attenuators built in to take up unused panel space so this isn't a problem at all.

I can't really think of much more to say on this one, it's really simple in layout, easy to use, and sounds great. I'm sure you'd use it all the time if it was in your rack. Oh, it's also really cool to have something that says "Buchla" in your rack case as well!!