Your favourite cheap small boxes of tricks (synths, noise, effects)?

btw!

  • used Electribe 2 (Hacktibe firmware rocks)
  • FB-01 if you’re lucky enough
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Both my cheapest box, and one of the most interesting: Volca Drum.

I also rank the PO-32 - well, it includes Microtonic - among the very best drum machines

(I own/love AR, MD, RazzMatazz and BlastBeats, but I wouldn’t call any of these cheap)

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Considering this is the Elektronauts forum, I’d say anything under 300 :money_mouth_face:

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My Nintendo DS with Korg DS-10 cartridge

image

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Boss RSD-10 and RPS-10. Got to keep an eye open to pick them up for under €200 but they’re wild little boxes.

MIDISID:

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Recently, I’ve been messing around a lot with my Sampletrak and Uno Synth Pro. You can get either one for about 200 to 250 used so I think they both qualify.

The Uno Synth Pro, as well as the original are really nice old school sounding synths in their own right. And on the Pro you can route incoming audio through the filters and fx.

The Sampletrak is an old phrase sampler. I think that it’s the fastest to use out of all of them. The only time you really have to wait for anything is when you’re saving or loading something from the smart media card. It’s also got a 6 octave pitch range. And things can get really crunchy when you sample at lower rates. I like it a lot.

What I’ve enjoyed doing recently is running the Sampletrak through the Uno Pro. I’m trying to get that old 80s Akai rack sampler vibe without spending 80s Akai rack sampler money.

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While not hardware, Cyclone from SonicCharge is a free complete emulation of the Yamaha TX16W rack sampler from the late 80s, it can sample via feeding its inputs via a daw and has that classic crunchy sound to its output and is the best alternative I’ve come across to dropping a load of cash on the physical equivalent!

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Nice! I didn’t know this existed!

Fairly cheap, my circuit-bent Kaoss Pad 1.

I get sounds from it I’ve not been able to get elsewhere.

Not easy to tame, great fun trying!

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Any of the more recent Zoom multi effects units - MS50, MS70, G3. I’m currently using their G3N as my gigging rig straight into a power amp. The amp emulations are great (it can nail my ‘real’ Boogie MkIII tone) and the FX aren’t too shabby either (and there’s an absolute truckload of them). The only issue IMO is a lack of midi, but for the price I can’t complain.

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Yeah dude! Great little box. Thing rips.

I’ll also give the Gecho Loopsynth as my vote.
A little hard to integrate for me, but loads of fun on its own.

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Not a box but my $40 plastic ukulele is nice noise generator! That with a tape echo and all is good!

I found this in the subway the other day. I didn’t use it yet but planned to do it. Does free count as cheap? :rofl:

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The little 1010 colored boxes are nice! My brother has the lemon one, and it’s quite cool.

If I didn’t have a Syntakt I’d grab the Razz.

The Fireball looks nice too, but I have an addiction to fancy wavetable synths, so it wouldn’t add much for me.

Blackbox is a bit pricier, but is small and super powerful.

ZOIA too.

Those last two are debatable on the cheap requirement, but they pack a ridiculous amount into a tiny space.

I like the PO-32 (uTonic) and Megaman PO.

And of course Korg has you covered in a ton of ways.

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+1 for Monotron Delay. It’s crazy how evil this tiny monster can get.

And the Kaoss Pad Quad. Kind of lofi and very easy to control.

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I bought a cheap one of those not long ago from ebay for use as an always ready noise source for the OT. If it’s the ICF-P26 it was one of the last transistor radios that were still being manufactured I think, Sony has discontinued it now apparently.

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It’s an ICF-P27.

hell yeah, great machine.
my favorite synth to pair with Syntakt.
the only thing i miss is 4th oscillator – since it’s paraphonic, but can’t play a full blown diminished 7th chord :tongue: anyway, not a problem with regular chords where perfect 5th can be just omitted.

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