Description

Chernobyletta is a Eurorack module based on the psychogeographic Chernobylizer drone synth. With a variety of CV, ins and outs there are a great number of possibilities for making noise/music/drones/sounds/fx and it’s a great basis for further manipulating, filtering and modulating when combined with other modules.

Chernobyletta combines 6 x squarewave oscillators to produce a wide range of heavy drones, harsh noise, engine-like pulsations and 8-bit-esque crunchy bleeps. The oscillator chip is powered by the CV input, giving an unusual kind of voltage control over the noise. This is not voltage-per-octave or even HZ/Volt, but is very playable and has a wide range.

The Gain and Offset knobs allow you to use a variety of control voltages so you can tweak/tune them to a range that you prefer. These controls give you the flexibility to use bipolar signals (eg LFOs or even audio) or unipolar signals (eg ADSR, sequencers etc) or any other eurorack signal you want to experiment with.

Features:

• CV Gain – Controls the CV input level, from silence all the way up to fuzz/distortion to square off the waveform if you want.
• CV Offset – Adds a full range bipolar offset to the CV signal so you can tweak it positive or negative as you need. You can take this to extremes, turning the signal into complete positive or negative DC offset if you desire. Without a CV input jack plugged in, the Gain knob does nothing and the Offset knob controls the overall pitch of the oscillators directly instead.
• CV Out jack – allows you to optionally output this altered CV signal to other modules.
• Drain – Turned anticlockwise this reroutes the power CV through a bank of large capacitors, charged by the switch, causing weird smoothing of the signal and a gradual draining effect.
• Starve switch – further starves the drained signal, lowering the pitch and increasing the chaos of the noise in mysterious ways.
• Oscillators 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 – these 6 knobs tune the pitch of the 6 starved oscillators, which are then mixed together and sent to the outputs. They have a wide range and can go from extremely high pitched to low rumbles, crunches and clicks beyond the audio spectrum.
• Distortion – controls the amount of fuzz/distortion/gain on the main output. If you plug a signal into the Distortion Input that will override the oscillators, and instead distorts your own signal. (the secondary output on the right still puts out the oscillators tho. The secondary ‘clean’ output doesn’t have this stage so it has a different character of its own, with more dynamics and sounding quieter when the oscillators are very power-starved.) The distortion circuit uses LEDs as clipping diodes and these shine through the front panel so you can see as well as hear the noise.
• 6 Touchpads – Modulates each of the 6 oscillators. The touchpads’ effect varies depending on the knob settings.

Chernobyletta – Build Document & User Manual

Specs:

• Gold and Black Frontpanel
• Width: 20HP
• Module Depth: 46mm
• Power: +/-12v standard eurorack 10-pin connector, red stripe down
• Power consumption: +12V: about 50mA, -12V: about 10mA