Alternatively it’s £375 for the POM 400 and you get 16 modules and the power bits and a case
That’s £18 a module if you remove £100 for the psu and distro
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Am I missing something or does anyone else think this is the most boring set of modules possible with hardly any modulation possibilities? The whole point of modular (to my mind) is to get super experimental with modulation everywhere but this just looks like a way to make a standard synth.
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I have the PO400 and it has enough modulation possibilities within that scope, but yeah a bit limited compared to a typical module in another format. It reminds me a bit of a synthi kind of thing, though without the matrix (some guy made one though!)
However:
Sequencer is a bit crap, VCO’s are only single wave each - bit daft IMHO.
Build quality is flimsy, knob spacing is dumb.
BUT:
Sounds excellent, is a lot of fun.
Just ok value for money I think.
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It could be great (for the price) if they start creating some more interesting modules to compliment the more standard issue ones here.
BTW PO400 was £449 at launch IIRC. With a shit PSU that burnt out.
I should be a youtube reviewer 
Not.
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This is what stopped me from buying a POM400 and getting a Mother 32 instead.
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The current price is much better, they clearly have a lot of unsold stock which has changed their strategy to selling individual modules.
I mean it doesn’t make any other sense - they’re not eurorack, they don’t make adaptors they are highlighting other companies that do and they don’t have a range of cool funky TE cases that you can buy and link together. If this was the plan, then would have their own system.
This is stock clearance
I think I recall that they mentioned when pom400 was as released that they were gonna sell modules separately as well.
So I don’t think it is stock clearance.
So where are the cases for them? The official eurorack integration parts? The packaging is the same as the boxes as they came in the 400 / 170 kit.
Why discount the 400 by £75?
This has all the signs of a poorly selling product being repackaged. The £29 price point and language is to make it seem more affordable than eurorack - that’s a technique to sell what didn’t sell as a package.
I mean your probably not wrong about the POM, but I know for a fact that they were planning to sell individual modules… the decision not to add panels though is an odd one to me
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They could have sold the modules like this in these boxes at this price on day one. They’ve done nothing to “prepare” the range?
I’m not convinced.
I remember them saying at launch that they would be sold as individual modules aswell… this seems to be them doing that but the execution might be a bit off.
I think this whole line is the result of someone at TE thinking ‘modular - that’s right up our alley, that would be easy’ and then without any thought as to instrument design they took it right to production. The systems look like my first modular grid explorations - oh yeah, 3 vcos, that looks good… Gotta add a sequencer… And like my first modular system it’s basically a crummy monosynth with nothing going for it except as a conversation piece (maybe that’s their market though?)
TE could have nailed it with a handful of thoughtful designs that incorporated what make the op-1 great, (how cool would a cv controllable tape recorder be?? Or any of their effects?) they really dropped this one bad.
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I’ve heard unverified whispers that the POM line actually was designed by the human comparator… so I mean, it’s not some nobody who designed them.
Edit: to me it seems like it’s the hardware that’s the weak link. Which seems to be a common component in TE products… but I think that’s the risk you take for when you pushing the envelope
Agreed. I feel like I’m shitting on these things too much but it does seem a bit style over substance, which is the direction TE seems to have chosen lately – the desktop computer case is a prime example. All I can say is that the modules are dirty cheap and could provide a gateway for someone looking to learning about modular synthesis and it might be a good option for schools and universities.
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That would make sense- the Recursive Machine aesthetic looks similar to POM. Now if there were any logic modules or compelling feedback possibilities as I see in the Recursive Machine I might be sold.
Regardless of how folks feel about the quality/usefulness/sonic possibilities of the modular stuff they’re putting out, I’m at least happy to see that we can put the “TE no longer makes music-making devices” conversation to bed. Around the the OB-4 release it seemed like many people were ready to say TE would never make new instruments ever again.
It’s also good to see that TE still has an interest in creating affordable products sometimes. IIRC one of the big motivations behind the Pocket Operator line was to come out with something that ran counter to the idea that everything TE made was overpriced. These feel like a similar type of thing for modular. A PO-33 isn’t as good as full-fledged MPC, but we’re at a point now where PO33 was probably a lot of people’s first hardware sampler! This could be a similar gateway device for many people to get into modular, and later modules could really open up the possibilities.
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Apparently they will release cad data for all the modules. I would love to try and design a custom case with some modules in them…
For instance, make a filter bank cube or a sequencer pyramid or some other whacky design… gonna try and do some designs as soon as the CAD data is up and I have the time and energy to actually design something…
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Tbh the PO-33 and PO-32 are brilliant devices… I wish that TE would implement the PO-32 engine in their other devices as well.
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If they could re-imagine some of their PO line as affordable modular pieces it’d be amazing, especially stuff from the “metal” series.
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