The Eurorack case

So when I started my Eurorack modular adventure, I was intending to make it ‘keyboardless’. As Brian Eno apparently said, it takes a week to learn to play a synth and years to learn not to play it. Or something.

However, I’m a synth player at heart and so felt that it was about time I made a proper synth like case for my main set of modules. In reality, I end up triggering them from sequencers most of the time, but I find having a permanently attached keyboard makes getting sounds initially much quicker and more fun for me.

The case is very much modelled on the now un-available Analogue Systems Sorcerer case. This seemed like a good basic design to me. The power supply is from Analogue Systems as it provides plenty of power on all 3 rails. Following my ‘synth’ mentality, I have hard wired some of the patching. The 2 Doepfer mixers to the left of the keyboard are normalled to the input of the main osc CVs and the filters respectively. Then, the 2 LFOs are nomalled to the first two mixer inputs, so I can easily send LFOs to the oscs or filters in varying amounts with no patching. I know this totally goes against the concept of the patchable synth to an extent, but on the other hand, I really like the semi- modular nature of things like the MS-20, so it made sense to follow that idea in this project.

Also, a DC offset goes to an input on the pitch CV mixer, giving me an ‘overall’ tuning pot for all 4 oscs, and the pitch CV also goes to the filter mixer so I can send varying amounts of keyboard tracking to the filters.

The Keyboard is a standard Fatar 4 octave, no after touch or touch sense, but that suits me fine as I prefer the faster action (well…. higher key contacts effectively) of the non touch sense actions for this style of synth. Then there’s an Analogue Systems Midi-CV converter hidden in the case, and a little patch wired to the CV and Gate outputs, so it ‘feels’ like a ‘proper’ CV keyboard!

The case is made from 18mm Oak, which is WAY over the top, but is what was available to me at the time and feels very substantial!

The Doepfer ribbon controller was sort of an after thought. It would have been nice to incorporate it into the case, but it’s also nice to be able to remove it.

The Modules are:

Expert Sleepers ES1 / Analogue Solutions CV Buffer / Macbeth Dual VCO / Doepfer dual attenuator / Analogue Solutions VCO / Analogue Solutions VCO-SUB / Analogue Solutions mixer / Analogue Solutions LFO x2 / Analogue Solutions Sample and Hold / Analogue Solutions EG x2 / Borg 2 Filter / Analogue Systems RS100 / Doepfer Dual VCA / Analogue Solutions Headphone OP / Doepfer Ribbon controller / Doepfer CV mixers x2