Post

Hi Garfield !

Honestly I'm not sure I can personally recommend Three Sisters right now since I haven't personally tested it, I'm relying on a friend who knows the "music" I make and he played with it a bit when he travelled, I don't have a dealer handy to test modules apart from the limited stock that makes it to the shop in my town unfortunately. As you put it, "just blindly" is all I have to work with most times.Demos on the web seem to demonstrate what my friend told me about it though, a filter with character and interesting I/O, I'm particularly curious to test in person the Centre and All outputs... But I'll tell you all about it when it makes it here, I just paid for a second hand one form a guy offering a good deal on a Plaits :) All in all, I think the Plaits is a better choice for me due to a larger sound palette than the Basimilus Iteritas Alter.

About the search for sequencers, I find it difficult as well, it sure requires a lot of research. Ground Control and the Black Sequencer both look great but at 40HP+, I feel I don't have the space. Getting one of those in would mean getting rid of other things I need or upgrade to a second 7U already, I just can't afford it :) The menu diving is not scaring me, both the Squarp and the ToolBox are way simpler than the Octatrack which is known to be a complex, "menu-divy" machine, the important thing for me is accessibility of the important functions during performance which seems to be on point for both devices (mutes, pattern switching in sync, etc can be accessed almost immediately). The deciding factor will be wether or not Hermod can switch project on the fly and in sync with the external clock coming from the OT, its 8 tracks are more flexible than the layout offered by ToolBox and it's less expensive but 8 sequences per project is just not enough for me.

A bit more about the T-sL: I think placement in the rack is very important because one absolutely needs access to the small knobs. Yesterday evening's experiment was about testing that module further (I'm still learning stuff so daily practice is my life now), and it further confirmed that I can get amazing tones from it by feeding it a lot of modulation and playing with those attenuators, provided that I can physically access the knobs :) Through the QPAS, with a pitch-shift delay from the Pico DSP and a touch of reverb from the Disting, it sounded amazing ! Worse case scenario, I can use the attenuators from the Quadratt 1U, although they're usually full pretty early in the patch, very useful performance tool that one.

I know understand what you meant by not wanting to tame the OctaSource. I realized that applying its modulations to key parameters (clever patching is everything, I know hehe), the change in sound or groove you can get by modulating its phase or wave is just ridiculous. Another module rewarding experimentation a lot, a simple but effective design really. I wonder what would happen if you patch one of its outputs back into the phase input, I'll try that some day soon :)

Best,
Diego