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Hi Worstname,

Ha, ha, I like your name :-) !

Well... I can see your rack as a picture image but not as a link to your rack. So please allow people to have a look at your rack and provide the link to your rack. Then I can have a more detailed look at it.

My first few impressions:

Yes your rack looks nice but for my personal taste a bit too many "nice & good looking modules" used and less focused on classic components, the "famous but partly boring ones like" VCOs, LFOs, EGs, filters, VCAs and other stuff like a logic module or something else to make your rack a bit more spicy :-)

I recognise the Maths module, certainly nice but a bit pity to use it "only" as a dual or semi-quad EG. René is certainly a nice module, it's also on my wishlist but it uses a lot of HP space and you might want to focus instead on other components first and then later with more (modular) experience looking into those "real nice modules" ;-)

Also found the Tempi in your rack, yes that's definitely a nice module, I use that one myself and I like it, so that one you can keep in your planning first.

Do I see there the Wogglebug as well? Funny and weird thing. I just got that module myself and just played a few days ago with it. Man what a module, it's difficult to tame that thing but I believe once one got more experience with using it, you can do some really weird and nice stuff with it. However to start with a module like that? I would rather start with the STO of Make Noise, that's a nice VCO and though it might look simple but after using the STO for a while one will realise that's a damn good oscillator.

By the way, we can shake hands regarding your Elektron A4, I just got recently one too. Nice device! I love the user interface and the decent quality of just using it, fantastic! I am still practicing with it. Yes it got 4 CVs/gates out and you need that. It sounds a lot but personally I feel a device never can have enough CV/gate outputs :-) Still... I am missing CV ins and gate inputs (or a clock input) on the A4, a real missed chance I think. So controlling with your A4 a modular system, yes that's feasible. However controlling with your modular an A4 (without using MIDI) that's difficult or just not possible; so I feel that's a bit of a pity other than that: A4 versus modular, yeah great! :-D

So in general please consider following:

• Check out the classic components and see if you can use a bit more of those and a bit less of the "fancy" ones
• Check out the rack size you are going to plan. You planned now already a full rack, so no space for extension. The "issue" with modular is that you always need more HP space. I planned a huge HP rack space and just recently got it full (seriously in no time it was full), not knowing what to do now, my hands in my hair so to speak (I am overdoing this here a bit but keep an eye on your HP space) --> thus plan a bigger one either plan to start with for example an Intellijel 7U case so you can extend it in the future with yet another same rack (there are rack plates on the market from Intellijel to connect two such cases; nice combination!) Or straight away plan something bigger like a Doepfer A-100 LC9 PSU3 (3 * 84 HP) or even better a Doepfer A-100 (3 * 168 HP) it's the most cost efficient rack if you look at $ or Euro per HP.
• Plan also free space in your rack, so let's assume you get yourself a rack with 3 rows, keep at least one row free when you start into modular, so you have at least some initial space to extend without the need to buy a new rack

Modular is quite different from your A4, they are so to speak two different worlds, both are fantastic if you can value the positives (and accept the negatives). Once you got into Modular, wow, it's so great, especially in your case in combination with the A4, heaven opens to you ;-)

Welcome to modular, careful with the planning though, few thousand bucks is nothing in modular and wrong planning means bye bye bucks. Make sure that what you plan, is what you need and want. On the other hand don't worry to make mistakes too much, it's part of modular too, as long as you are open to learn from mistakes, with future extension planning you can then improve your modular system.

Good luck and kind regards,

Garfield Modular.

Edit: Update a typo.

EDITED Jan 9th 2020, 08:06