Portal Drum (Eurorack!) News

Hello!

We've been working hard on our drum machine which includes some of the analogues sections of the Portal Kick/Drum euro module.  About 2 months ago we provided a discussion about how a standalone drum box made lots of sense for how we like to work and some unsurety about whether we would release a euro module containing the 'membrane' subset of this machine.

The good news is that we have decided to release the eurorack drum module!  Currently it is 20HP in size and has gotten many overhauls in the VCO, transient section, gain-staging, and EQs.  For those that are size-concious, rest assured that this module's increase in HP is absolutely necessary and is as compact as we feel it should be (there are 15 switches and 18 pots (5 of which are dual-concentrics to maintain playability while saving significant space).  We are glad we delayed the release of the euro version as we know the changes we have made have far exceeded even the original prototypes which we already felt were quite nice.  I think we're about 3 years in continuous development of this circuit and the time spent has been worth it as it has led to more great things which will be coming down the pipeline!

One of the reasons in our decision to release the euro version was due to the fact that a full-fledged drum machine in our style may not fit certain musicians' workflows - esp. those that are heavy into the modular for sound design and even performance.  The other major deciding factor was that the euro module and the drum machine would not have much overlap in what they could do and the kinds of sounds that will come out of each.

We are finalising the panel layout in the next few days and finishing up all of the ranging and 'external modulation play' (which is also required for the drum machine - which will indeed also be patchable!) before beginning final layout and the pre-production prototypes.  We'll be doing pre-orders once we have manufacturing set up and the prototypes are fully vetted.

Happy New Year!
RE


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