Blue Lantern Modules

Does anyone have experience with them?

I'm looking at that Mini Shimmery for a long time. But it seems no European store can offer them.

Why are they so underrated? They seem really affordable as well...

Why does none of the major EU-stores sell em??

https://www.bluelanternstore.com/

yes thanks, their mini shimmery is not there tho :(

guess I have to order from USA-seller.

There is a mini Shimmery mk2 on Juno, and a mk1 on reverb
https://reverb.com/item/32380425-blue-lantern-mini-shimmery-generator-2019-black

Ah okay this looks a lot different, guess that's why I didn't see... cheers

I know this is an old thread, but I've been wondering about this myself lately.

I rarely see them mentioned in the modular discussions and channels I've followed so far. They always have modules available that seem pretty affordable for what they do, with an interesting design aesthetic, but they just seem so glossed/passed over for the most part. I briefly had a Mini-Shimmery in my "first wave" of modular purchases as I was getting into it and setting up an initial rack, and while I didn't hang onto it for the long term, it was a cool enough little unit for its price.

If anyone else has good/bad experiences with Blue Lantern or their modules, I'd be curious to hear impressions.

I own the Blue Lantern Stereo Sir Mix-A-Lot and their Logic Module. I've not had any issues and the price for the Mix-A-Lot is quite good for the set of features.

There was a bit of controversy regarding the brand around 2010-2013. Some Googling will bring up message board posts elsewhere.

I’ve been eyeing the Sir Mix a Lot specifically actually. Curious about the controversy. My first impressions of modular getting into it were that everything was unicorns and awesomeness as far as the companies went. But aside from Behringer, I’ve seen pretty harsh things posted about Synthrotek and Tiptop and that some hobbyists won’t carry/support those brands. Blue Lantern too?

I’ve been eyeing the Sir Mix a Lot specifically actually. Curious about the controversy. My first impressions of modular getting into it were that everything was unicorns and awesomeness as far as the companies went. But aside from Behringer, I’ve seen pretty harsh things posted about Synthrotek and Tiptop and that some hobbyists won’t carry/support those brands. Blue Lantern too?
-- eexee

There's almost always some negativity around specific makers. I just wanted to post it in a neutral way. Me personally... I've not had an issue. But I'm not the fan-boy. The bit of kit I have works.

I rarely see them mentioned in the modular discussions and channels I've followed so far.

-- eexee

Similar to many modular "companies," "they" are just probably just one person, Flavio Mireles. (Similarly, Audio Damage was only two people.) So it could be a lack of marketing, which may be on purpose if he's already at capacity of how many modules he can produce/supply to dealers, etc.

When I interviewed him in 2016 he seemed like a decent guy. (6:16 in)

Interesting, thx for sharing. I understand giving a company a berth if they're kinda generally shitty -- e.g. Behringer -- but yeah, he seems likable enough in the interview, and if the past controversy was resolved to all parties satisfaction...(shrug). And while some people don't like his designs, I kinda dig them, and some of his filters sound mean AF from the few demos I've found. I had a Mini Shimmery and it did feel on the cheaply made side -- mostly basic plastic parts, kinda loose pots, some questionable and haphazard decisions in terms of the UI arguably -- but that said, it worked perfectly fine, was interesting, did what it was supposed to do. Just wasn't really the sound I expected or was after at the time (again, scarcity of demos). I might give one of his filters a go in the near future.

I don't like BL's stuff. Controversies aside, my sticky point with them is about their UIs. Some of the panel designs look like they were designed by accident, for example. Others have the "chopstick fingers required" problem, as they're too dense for the panel size used. There's several makers that I ding routinely due to their horrible panel designs and/or graphics (looking at YOU, Noise Engineering!), but BL goes so far that I can't even consider them seriously, especially not for starting modular users.

Lol -- Noise Engineering modules seem very popular and as far as I've seen pretty reputable, but yeah, their designs put me off too. I hate the busy panels and I could do without the Latin names too, which just make them very confusing to keep straight or intuit what kind of general category each module fits in. So I haven't taken the dive on any NE yet. There are a few that interest me though.

Same goes for the vaunted Make Noise. The black ones have a sort of appeal I guess, but seem to always be absurdly more expensive just for that (?), and the silver ones are ugly AF imo. That being said, I got a good deal on an Echophon, and like it quite well all in all, slightly wonky UI aside... certainly enough to explore other MN modules going forward.

As for BL, I feel like I should hate their designs, but most of them I actually kinda like (though a few of them are a real eyesore). Couldn't say why exactly, ADDAC or Doepfer vintage or more conservative looking modules are usually more my speed, aesthetically speaking.

Weirdly, I don't really like Mutable Instruments aesthetic all that much. I can understand the appeal, but something about their particular brand of cleanly/pristine/Helvetica-level-perfectness somehow translates to "big gay knobs / digital toy" for me at a gut level. And like NE's latin names, their gimmick with the module names all being sort of the same and giving you only the faintest clue about what kind of module it is, isn't a huge turn on to me, being fairly new to modular. (Which one is Blinds again? Veils? Shades? I have to look them up every time). Not to mention that beyond that, so far, I've been only mildly impressed by the two I've tried -- an Elements clone and a Rings non-clone. Elements was ... okay ... interesting to experiment with for a weekend or so ... but not really my thing at the end of the day. Rings is cool enough, I suppose.

Ok, I'm wayyy off topic now, but anyway lol....