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Hey all,
I just bought myself a small eurorack rig and while I’ve taught myself a lot, I’m having trouble with some details that can’t really be resolved via internet searches. Plus with all the money I’ve spent, trial and error could quickly turn into a smoking nightmare.

I want to meet up in person with someone who has sizable eurorack experience, just for some basics i.e. CV patching and making the most of utilities. Living in LA I doubt this will be too hard to find.

Willing to pay a reasonable hourly rate. Hit me up via this thread or PM.

Thanks
-Jamie

Thanks dude, yeah I know a lot of these are hard to find, as I said this is just a "dream" rack. I won't actually even have a case this big for several years. And just so onlookers don't think I'm superficial about this, I'll note that I do obviously understand the music comes first. In fact, I don't particularly like the Folktek color schemes at all, but they sound really amazing for what I'm trying to do.

The ERD module with the case of dirt is a mostly aesthetic, for example, but I'm really intrigued by the sound. After all, if visuals were purely unimportant, ZVex wouldn't have a handpainted customization option :P everything we're doing with modular is about aesthetics of sound, so why not take a few aspects of visual aesthetic into account while we do?

I feel like my subconscious has been looking for a Throbbing Gristle module already... I'll check vids on these recommendations right now. Also I made a new post (sorry for so many I'm excited) with a dream rack that I'd love feedback on. Check it out!

and @sacguy71 I agree—I think there's a huge temptation among techy Eurorack builders to start their own brand, but with the element of reliability, it's definitely a 1%er game. You're right about more promotion being needed. It's such a niche community that promotion should be pretty straight forward; spend the money at the right podcasts, YouTube channels, sites like these. Seems like at that point the real game is having an amazing product. No one wants to buy some regular EG or VCA from an up-and-comer, we want to hit Happy Nerding or Pittsburgh for that. Aesthetics matter too—I personally find Tiptop's faceplates hideous and therefore won't be buying. I think to really make it work, you go the Folktek or Error route and just do something so unique it can't be ignored. Who knows if those guys are even making a livable income at it though.

Any other Halo references out here in the rack archive?

I decided to use the maximum HP offered non-premium accounts and fit in everything that excites me at once, with utilities of course. It was a great fun, and a great way to test my understanding of functions and utilities thus far.

Rows in a nutshell—
First: oscillators, envelopes, mixers
Second: drums, sequencer
Third: effects
Fourth: touch controller, filters, VCAs

I heard stupid questions are encouraged here, so tear it to shreds. I have no idea if this ordering makes any sense at all but that's why I'm here.

One specific question I have is whether I need more sequencing gear. I know the USTA has a quantizer and clock but maybe I need two separate sequencers for drums and oscillators?

EDITED Jun 9th 2021, 02:44

Thanks, I'm checking FSS out as we speak. What are your favorites from them? I love hearing recs of companies I haven't heard of yet because it seems like of the thousands of modules shown on this site, people are almost afraid to get anything that isn't one of the top say 20 brands. ALM, IME, Make Noise, Bastl, Noise Engineering, Cwejman, Tiptop, Intellijel, Endorphines, Frap, 4ms, Bastl, Happy Nerding, Roland, Doepfer, Mutable, Erica, WMD, Instruo, Malekko, XAOC, Rossum. There's 500 more though lol

What kind of music are you making?
-- farkas

For my current project I've been creating two-to-four bar synth motifs in Ableton, adding live a drum part (I'm a drummer), looping it and doing spoken word verses on top. It's got a dark industrial feel, but I still try to be musical and keep some replay value—I love glitchy/chaotic sounds but similar artists seem to be just trying to make people's ears bleed.

I've done this using my beloved DSI Mopho x4 and various plugins (Arturia, u-he, etc.) for a while, and after thinking long and hard about what my next hardware synth should be, I decided that instead of dropping $2-3k on one new DSI or a fragile vintage piece that I already have a great emulation of, I can spend that money starting a Eurorack and really make sounds no one has ever heard. After watching hundreds of Eurorack vids, I really think this is the best investment for my intentions of creating those haunting, hypnotic loops. Planning to start with an Erica tube VCO, Error Liquid Glitcher, Folktek Matter, Maths, maybe a Squarp Rample, and mixer/EG/utilities.

No, it really doesn't matter and tone is near impossible to to tell the difference now.

-- sacguy71

My point here is that—regardless of the long debated difference in signal character—making an all-analog rule would lead me to a completely different rack of modules than if I didn’t

I’m not trying to have the perpetual analog vs. digital debate again, I have nothing against digital and I’m thrilled with a lot of the things people have done with digital modules.

But given the sea of different modules available, everyone has to make those “arbitrary” decisions for their rack’s limitations to some extent. The decision to stay fully analog is a mostly arbitrary but fun one, and you’re sure to get a certain sound that you wouldn’t if you melded analog and digital ones together.

So my questions are somewhat simple—any of you have experience doing it? Is it significantly more expensive? Is it terribly limiting?

I mean, the reason I’m going Eurorack instead of MU is that I want to take advantage of all the crazy innovative shit in Euro rather than the somewhat traditionalist, more often analog MU stuff. I don’t wanna be glued to only two or three brands. But then I also like the idea of starting with analog modules and later putting digital stuff in its own row.

More importantly, it’s been really hard for me to even know which Euro modules are fully analog. So many have digital components that I don’t even know if the vacuum tube ones are! Any tips on how to figure it out somewhat easily without elite knowledge of circuitry?

If you can, definitely get a bigger case and more utilities. Mantis case is affordable and would be an improvement over the tiny case pictured. You need VCAs, mults, attenuators, mixer, envelopes, switch and tools for modular more than you'd think. I highly recommend the combo of Mutable Instruments Links and Kinks. Perhaps add a Maths as well? Here is my recommendation

-- sacguy71

Thank you SO much for this. Really helped to get some direct pointers on what I need as far as utility. I saw a YouTube vid of a guy talking about how he felt like it was impossible to avoid getting a Maths in the process of building his first rack and I'm feeling the same about now hahah.

Also, you might reconsider that $1200 budget point...Eurorack ain't cheap.
-- Lugia

Thanks for your response, that all makes lots of sense. I should clarify that $1200 is my starting budget, and I hoped to build one module at a time from there given my current finances. My original plan was to save a solid $2000 and buy a whole rig at the synth shop in my town, but as I got more eager I started thinking $1200 was enough to begin with. Obviously I'm not too stoked on having a case and some modules waiting around until I've got enough cash to amass a real rig. Anyway, I appreciate the reminder that this is a big investment.

EDITED May 30th 2021, 23:31

Hi everyone!

The mockup you see below is as minimal as possible, and excludes dozens of modules I've been drooling over, but I'm really eager start making sounds within my budget of ~$1200.

I'm working on an industrial/synth-rock project, so I want something chaotic but musical. This Erica VCO sates my tube fetish, and the Ultraviolence sounds like exactly what I need for chaos. The dude from Error recommends another gate sequencer for it to reign in the rhythms, which is exactly what I was thinking, so I found that cool-looking, cheap-ish Blue Lantern.

The other modules are just what I determined to be "necessary" for those three to "function" well. I put those words in quotes because they're mostly subjective in modular world, but from what I've read, you're going to have a really hard time getting any satisfaction from a modular that doesn't have at least one VCO, filter, mixer, envelope and VCA. I know this setup doesn't have a mixer or filter. Please tell me what main issues I'd have if I bought all this and set it up right now.

Thanks! Link to rack:

EDITED May 30th 2021, 18:53