um. alright...
the waveshaping circuits of the 261e and the old 259 are very very very
close. they "sound the same." except that the old one is indeed hotter, and
the driving sine wave is not quite as clean or as stable in pitch.
to me, the functional difference is in the mod osc section. there are
tradeoffs. the 259 has nice smooth cv output and you can push it to very low
frequencies with cv input. this is good. the 261e has an additional, quite
radical waveshaping circuit on the mod osc itself, which allows you to
crossfade between sine, square, narrow square and a kindof funky sinusoidal
trapezoid. this is good too. listen to the phase locked mod osc audio
output! that is not the same, at all.
phase lock behaves differently. there are more possible behaviors in the
261e, as the process can receive certain information from software-land. and
these again can come out as very interestingly close spaced chaotic orbits.
experiment with frequency modulation + pitch tracking + phase lock for
maximally intricate orbit-space!
we will not do a 259 clone anytime soon. oh well.
i do luv me a 258. now THAT's buildable. of course maybe not by me, just at
the moment... i am busy!
-eb
On 5/19/07, cuari7 <cuari7@comcast.net> wrote:
>
> Word to the wise:
>
> Combining the mighty powers of a 200e with those of one of its
> forefathers, the mythical 259 (no "e"), may lead to an immediate,
> pathological addiction. Feed its distorted, convoluted output into
> that most evil of filters, the 291e, while you slowly sway its
> cutoff with a 281e in LFO mode, and toy with the modulating
> oscillator frequency with a joystick (or your voltage source of
> choice).
> The results are a medley of crunching, screaming, eerie whailing and
> chanting that will have your wife begging you to switch to
> headphones, or better yet, to get the hell outta the house and go
> mow the lawn or wash the car....
>
> I've gotta tell you, this 259 is INCREDIBLE. Not too dissimilar from
> the 261e, mind you, but it is, for starters, thicker-sounding (I
> hate the word fat. Loathe the word phat. Despise the word phatt..!).
> It also lacks the nervous jitter of the 261e (which is way worse in
> the 259e). I also love the fact that it provides a sawtooth wave,
> and that each oscillator are completely independent from each other
> (VC-wise).
>
> It would be SO NICE if Don decided to do a brief, limited-edition
> reissue of this wonderful oscillator.
>
> Any comments, Ezra...?
>
>
>
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