Analogue Solutions Fusebox Preview
Love At First Sight?
Tom Carpenter – Analogue Solutions – was at Synthesea 2017 in Hastings to show, for the first time in public, his new orange analogue synth beast… FUSEBOX.
It was love at first site! On arrival at the event’s door, the first thing that caught my eye was this beautifully orange synthesizer. You can’t miss it and I mean it in a good way. It is a very appealing shade of orange, you will have to see it in person because of course in photos it will appear brighter or darker depending on the lighting.
Months ago I purchased a Eurorack Module from Analogue Solutions and received excellent service from Tom, a very approachable man, and meeting him in person was a confirmation of his friendly attitude.
His show area was pretty busy with a constant stream of visitors wanting to see and touch the Fusebox. I was lucky enough to get Tom’s attention and patience for a few minutes. Due to some postal delays I was unable to bring with me my new audio recorder therefore all I had to record audio demos was the mic input of my digital camera, no mixer. Tom was patient enough to bear with me as we tried to find a way to record both a spoken description of the Fusebox by the man himself and an audio demo again performed by Tom.
A description of the main sections of the synth with images follows below, but here are the links to two videos I was able to shoot that day
NOTE: recording the audio straight into the Mic Input of the camera, without being able to set levels, is not the best way to record audio on the fly. There will be distortion and compression, all I can say for now is that live, through the monitor speaker, Fusebox sounded fantastic. I hope to make a better audio recording of this synth soon
The Fusebox rear enclosure has been cleverly designed to allow you to mount the synth horizontally desktop style or vertically free-standing.
When set vertically, the sockets, including MIDI In/Out/Through, are easy to reach. As a user you would be looking at the rear of the synth from the top and you will not need to walk to the rear of the instrument to plug and unplug cables. You can easily plug and unplug from the top. It does look pretty nice from behind!
Analogue Solutios Fusebox - What Does It Offer?
Full analogue mono synth with three oscillators. The Mixer section allows you to mute oscillators and use them as modulators.
Multimode Filter offering Low Pass, High Pass, Notch and Band Pass.
An Arpeggiator you can control using a midi keyboard.
Two Envelopes.
Mastertune with modulation. LFO with Delay (Cutoff and PWM control).
Midi to CV sockets: Pitch, Accent, Midi Clock, Gate, Velocity, Control 55.
VCA section includes an Headphone Amp.
Interval Generator – You can setup six notes and can use them to transpose patterns.
Patternator – A cross between a Step Sequencer and an Arpeggiator. It offers four CVs you could use on Pitch, Filter Cutoff, etc… and dedicated control of beats, note skipping, reset…
Note: Price and Release dates are only rough estimates for now:
The price should be around £950 + VAT
Release date: two or three months away, possibly around September 2017.
Analogue Solutions Fusebox synthesizer surely looks like a lot of fun. Good first impression on sound and in terms of the overall package with 3 Oscillators, Patchable Modulations, built-in Midi to CV section, Arpeggiator, easy transposing with the Interval Generator and the novel Patternator… it’s a creative paradigm I would love to add to my setup.
I look forward to seeing the Fusebox released and hopefully getting my hands on it for a more in-depth review of its sonic capabilities.
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Until next time… Happy Euroracking, Have Fun!
