10 April 2008

Cwejman S1 MK2 Arrived

Finally the Cwejman S1 MK2 arrived. I ordered it a long time ago and this is my first serious go at modular synthesizers. Actually the S1 is a semi-modular which means that without patching you can already use it. Without patching it just acts as an analog synthesizer with a predetermined signal path, but you have the ability to change this. You can also hook it up to other modulars. It uses mini jacks so I can hook it up already to the PAIA 9700S. I tried it out and I must say it sounds great! One of the first things I noticed is that you can put both of the filters in self oscillating mode by turning the knobs all the way to the right. I had never seen that before on a synthesizer.

As you can see in the picture on the right I found a nice spot for the S1 in my analog corner. Doesn't it look great next to the Moogs? I will have to study this synthesizer a bit more than I'm used to do though. I might even have to read the manual :) Usually that is only in last resort, but I really want to understand what all the inputs and outputs do before I start patching. I will use this semi-modular especially for nice space and ambient effects. You will hear a lot of them on coming albums. Maybe I will post some sounds examples later. If I can find some time.

2 comments:

Gabardine said...

HEY...
So, one year of use this geat... what are your feelings now ?

I've never use modular synth, and not sure i appreciate the philosophy, but i must say that i've never ear such sounds, and i feel really interested by it.

So, what about your experience ?

Synth.nl said...

It is a lovely machine. It is semi-modular by the way. That means when you don't patch anything you can use it as a normal synthesizer. The oscillators on this thing are very clean and precise. The double filter with all the mixing options make it very flexible. The only thing it is lacking is more modulation sources, but well that is what it is modular for. You can use other modulars to control it. I have it in a rack with a Red Square and a Semtex XL and I patch then together often. But ofter I use the S1 as a regular analog synth because of it flexibility and the way it sounds.