Endorphin.es Queen of Pentacles complex hybrid drum module rocks 909 day
Make way for the Queen of Pentacles a massive 7 voice drum module combining analogue and digital sound sources with Endorphin.es’ inspired filtering and effects processing.
Queen of Pentacles
Wow, what a start to 909 day! Endorphin.es has taken the concept of their BLCK_NOIR drum module and developed it into what looks like a royal combination of analogue and digital drum sources. Queen of Pentacles is a complex 7-voice percussive synthesizer module where 3 voices are analogue and 4 are sample-based.
The analogue side takes care of the bass drum, snare and clap and are based on the discrete Roland TR-909 circuits. The sounds are created by 3x band-limited LSRF binary noise generators with spectrum animation before being injected into the discrete analogue circuitry. The bass drum has tune decay, drive trimmers and tail length with CV control. Snare and Clap have separate tune controls but share the same knob for tail and noise spectrum animation.
The sample side starts off as hi-hats, ride and crash cymbals but via an SD card slot they can be anything you want. Simply stick on your favourite wave files and the Queen of Pentacles becomes an MPC (sort of). There are some controls over volume, decay and pitch for shaping your one-shot samples. You’ll also get a bonus bank of samples from Berlin-based techno producer Nicolas Bougaïeff.
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The onboard effects processor that comes from the BLCK_NOIR has 2 banks of 8 effects full of reverbs, delays and other drum orientated effects.
Each voice can be triggered by a button or CV input and can then be boosted by accent or velocity inputs. They have individually volume knobs (samples 1&2 and 3&4 are combined) and via a switch you can mute the track or switch it into the effects bus. The main volume controls the overall level and lets you inject some nice saturation. There are individual outputs with the sample teaming up into pairs again or there’s a final stereo mix output that comes after the filter and saturation.
The big knob in the middle is a dual low and hi-pass filter with resonance and CV control.
The Queen of Pentacles is a meaty drum module that is fabulous in black and aims to combine the best of both worlds into an extraordinarily versatile percussion synthesizer. At €550 it’s quite a meaty price but considering it’s 7 sound modules, a mixer, an effects module and filter then it’s actually pretty reasonable. My only question is why put the SD card slot behind the module rather than on the front?
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4 responses to “Endorphin.es Queen of Pentacles complex hybrid drum module rocks 909 day”
And it’s half of the price of new Maschine+, that is a computer based controller. LOL
So what? It requires a sequencer, a mixer and is a totally different product. I personally think both products make a lot of sense and are reasonable in their pricing whilst both on the higher end.
Robin, “.es” is part of the name of the company. It’s not Endorphin. It’s Endorphin.es.
Ah, ok, i’d always thought it was just the URL extension.