This green machine seems to be quite popular amongst home studio owners. It’s a filterbank, not too expensive, from a very little known, and out of buisiness last time I heard, company.  So it has everything on it’s side to become ‘the piece of kit to add some unique sounds to your setup’.. Does it live up to those expectations,..

nope.

It’s a simple filter, and not very much more then that. It filters a sound, depending on your settings, and does that very well. It has a HUGE range, from the subsonic to the extreme highs, loads of resonance (more on that later).. but it all keeps sounding very plain. Even the ‘buzz’ don’t really make up for the lack of character. In fact, it’s such a plain clean filter that I have used it for recording purposes rather as sound mangling. It’s a great HP filter and the one on my desk isn’t variable . .. so it’s very useful after all, but a bit expensive just to use as an extreme EQ.

IMHO, the designers of this piece of gear had a bit of a product placement issue. It seem to have 2 intended markets. Home studio owners and DJ’s. I suppose DJ’s will get more use out of it as they will benefit from a clean filter, as that works better on whole songs.. The thing also has some ‘performance oriented’ controls which are clearly targeted at DJ’s. Although, anyone who has punched in a distortion and/or filter in realtime knows it’s just a matter of time before you run into a huge difference in volume (and a possible a blown amp if you’re having a bad day). That will make you think twice before trying such a thing again… especially in a live situation, which, ironically is the intended purpose of these controls.

And about high unpredictable volume …  there is resonance. I already mentioned there was a bit of a wide range. On my unit, everything in resonance above 5 (so that’s halfway) is useless. It starts to self resonate, and can generate such insane amounts of sub-bass energy you’ll risk blowing anything else in the signal chain such as your amp and/or speakers. I know, some of you guys out there will be thrilled about this, but too much is too much, and it’s really too much. It can simply jump into a massive sub-fest leaving your mixing desk lights flickering, your speaker cones moving, and any other gear in the signal chain going nuts, but you’ll hear nothing as it’s simply below human audible frequencies. And that’s a problem.. if you’d push it too far you’ll end up losing everything, a bit like a sports car. If you’ll push it too hard cornering, you’ll suddenly find yourself crashed into a wall wondering what happened.

Now, there are off course also good things to say about it. One thing that immediately becomes apparent is the build quality. It’s in one work excellent! It’s solid thick metal casing probably can survive the most brutal beating, stop a bullet at close range and survive life on the road. But not only the casing is solid, the controls all feel very decent and trustworthy. Clearly a lot of effort went into this and as a result it’s a joy to operate. I wish more manufacturers would put such an effort in their build quality.. there are way too much flimsy knobs in any given studio.

Another nice thing about it is it’s decent IO. It has decent midi implementation, phono inputs (including a ground) and pretty much every other connection you’d wish from such a unit including CV. The knob on the back to set the midi channel is a great idea a lot of other manufacturers should consider (instead of implementing yet another weird push buttons sceme to do it.). The LFO syncs nicely to incoming midi sync, and everything else can also be midified. I’m not the kind of guy who autmates a lot, but it’s nice to know it can be done. A tap function can be used to get a tempo in absence of a clock input which is nice, but I rather wished some kind of audio tracking.. I never use it without midi sync so.. what do I care ?

Featurewise though there is little interesting stuff going on. A ‘Buzz’ provides some overtones to the signal before being filtered. It feels more or less like a simple fuzz box rather then a classic distortion and sounds, IMHO, rather basic. Then there is the filter, switchable between modes and can function stereo at 12db of mono at 24db. There is an envelope follower or LFO with the appropriate controls (amount speed, etc..). And that’s it. No weird or nifty stuff like you’ll find on most other filtering devices. All you get are the basic filter controls you’ll find on almost any synth. I truly find this pretty annoying as it provides little incentive to experiment. You could get yourself a synth with external audio input for more or less the same price and end up with far wider sonic palette. Heck, if you’re lucky you could pick up a Korg MS10 for around that price.

As a conclusion.. it’s everyone for his own. It’s a good filter, a bit too clinical for my taste, but it may suit yours fine. It can handle complex signals without turning them to mud, but, as a result, lacks the abillity to turn simple signals to something more interesting. It’s very userfriendly to operate and does what it says on the tin. If you’re interessted in this machine I can only advise you to try it out before parting with the cash. It’s not cheap to get on the 2nd hand market, and with a little extra cash you can get a Sherman filterbank which simply offers tons more soundmangling power. In fact,  You could replace this filterbank with a decent plugin for your computer not even costing half the price… but then again, no one likes to sweep a filter with a mouse, such a big ass knob simply is much more fun, way more fun !