Reader Hannes Pasqualini contacted us to let us know about the new Mutable Instruments 4-Pole Mission Shruthi-1 synthesizer.
“I think you should totally post something about this,” writes Pasqualini.
4-Pole Mission Accomplished:
Mutable Instruments just released the 4-Pole Mission Shruthi-1. which comes with the new 4-Pole mission filter board. This new board is probably the most advanced 4-pole core for the Shruthi-system! It uses the same “Pole-mixing” technique introduced in the Oberheim Xpander to provide a cornucopia of filter responses. It also provides 4 different settings controlling the “flavour” of the resonance, clean and liquid, MS-20 style, wobbly/chaotic, and a combination of the MS20 and wobbly modes.
Mutable Instruments calles it a Polymorphic filter, which leads to some interesting visual associations…
It sounds great and it also looks great and comes with a fake movie poster that reminds of a certain movie by John Carpenter.
If you’re not familiar with the Shruthi-1, it’s an inexpensive hybrid digital/analog monosynth kit that’s designed to be assembled with a screwdriver and a soldering iron.
The 4-Pole Mission edition of the Shruthi-1 introduces a new filter board, based on an extremely clean and stable SSM2164 4-pole core, with more than one trick up its sleeves. 60 tricks, actually.
Introduced for the first time in the Oberheim Matrix-12 and Xpander, the pole-mixing technique allows 15 filter responses to be reconstructed from the individual stages of a 4-pole cascade. This very same technique is used on the 4-Pole Mission filter board, to provide you with the following modes: 6/12/18/24 dB/octave low-pass ; 6/12/18 dB/octave high-pass ; 12/24 dB/octave band-pass ; notch ; phase-shift ; notch + low-pass ; phase-shift + low-pass ; and combinations of 12/18 dB/octave high-pass and low-pass.
The Shruthi-1 4-Pole Mission kit sells for €130.00 EUR. You can get the details at the Mutable Instruments site.
Read on if you want to know about the 4-Pole Mission’s secrets!
The new synth has an ‘easter egg’ type circuit board image, featuring an awesome evil dog thing icon!
The synth also has glowing LED creepy dog eyes – which can be very important for properly mutating sound:
Check it out and let us know what you think of the Shruthi-1 4-Pole mission synth!
Shruthi-1 #2 has been ordered. The filter on this one is incredible. Can’t wait to get soldering again.
thanks a lot for posting this!
oh and btw. should I mention that I did all the graphics and the poster for this or is it too much shameless self promotion? 🙂
I don’t want that synth?
I want that dog !!!!!!
not sure… it might be chopping your head off with a bite, or even worse, stick that slimey tongue up your nose and take control over your brainnsszzz!
i am so tempted to buy it. but i have never soldered anything in my life. i was just wondering: how difficult is it to assemble a shruti? the price difference between a kit and the finished product is so big that i am tempted to buy the kit and try to assemble it myself but i am afraid i will fuck it up completely…
You don’t want to practice on this. I’d suggest you find some other cheaper kits that you might either enjoy or could give as a gift. The Drawdio is a fun little project. There’s a theremin in an altoilds tin that’s pretty inexpensive. The projects at adafruit.com or http://www.ladyada.net have good instructions. So if you can find something you like there, you won’t be out so much if you mess it up. Whether or not you want to order the kit from Mutable to pressure yourself to learn is up to you.
When I built my first Shruthi-1 (actually it was the Shruti-1, the predecessor of the current synth) I had only done an Atari Punk Console. I was a total noob to soldering electronics and DIY. I was able to complete the whole process in one afternoon and the thing still works like a charm (so it seems that I haven’t done any big mistakes). The Shruthi is really a simple project even for someone with no experience, just practice a bit with the soldering, once you’re able to make a nice and shiny solder pad you’re ready to go!
There’s plenty of great guides out there to learn how to solder, for example check out this one: http://store.curiousinventor.com/guides/How_To_Solder (but there’s a lot more if you google a bit)
I think there is another advantage to building your own synth, besides the price point, you’ll be really proud of yourself once you’re done! 🙂
On the mutable instruments website you’ll find detailed guides to build all the kits, for example take a look at this one:
http://mutable-instruments.net/shruthi1/build/digital
Don’t forget that 130€ is price for semi-kit, which contains most parts but not all. Most common ones must still be bought from elsewhere. Like Mouser or Reichelt, zum Beispiel.
I checked the info on site again: http://mutable-instruments.net/shruthi1/4pm
“Semi-kit
130€. All parts included except resistors / capacitors / transistors / sockets. Directly purchase the remaining parts, worth less than 20€, from Mouser or Reichelt using the saved shopping carts.”
I ordered one and used that reichelt’s shared shopping cart. I really like that feature. Picking those components one by one would have taken days from me!
correct. The BOM on the website gives you the exact product codes for the missing components so ordering them is really easy if you stick to the suggested retailers.
I built a shruti 1 kit, tested it, and was about to wrap it up with joy. Then, a static charge from my plastic Ikea chair and my carpet zapped my shruti board. The display went nuts, showing what looked like Sanskrit, and the signal went quiet. Now the display is normal but the signal is very quite. Haven’t touched it in a long time, but now I might start over with the 4 pole mission. There are waveforms on the shruti that You won’t find anywhere else. For the 14 hours I had with my shruti, I was really impressed.
You could: A sell your zapped rig (of course, fully disclosing the damage) to someone who might be able to test/swap-out the various static sensitive IC’s until it is working. Or you could do this yourself- then sell– if you are wanting to updated rig.
I wonder if there is an upgrade path from an older shruti-1 kit. Easy enough to find out, I suppose.
the Shruthi-1’s all share the same digital (top) board and the filter/power supply/ audio input-output (bottom) boards are interchangeable. So you should just be able to buy a new filter board and plug it into an existing digital board. You’d have to upgrade the software on the digital board to control the new filter but that’s easy to do.
You wouldn’t get the neat case and the wolf eyes though.
What is this a crazy skrillex movie?