In celebration of eccentric artists inventing tiny unexpected things to fit into single-row Eurorack, it’s again 1Uesday. And we’re extending our antennas to pick up FM radio broadcasts on this episode.
Radio killed the video star
Beepboop Electronics is working on a “Musique Concrete-based Eurorack system” – you know, for kids. And the latest is a cute little 1U BBCV FM radio module, complete with a telescoping antenna. The guts are just a standard FM radio, but in addition to tuning via knob, you can run CV into the tuner. Just make sure you have depth in your case – it’ll take 46mm because of an AM coil. Spectrum: 88 mHz to 106.5mHz, which they’ve tuned to the FM stations in the UK, but I think covers terrestrial signals in a lot of places. (A handful of places do use the lower end of the frequency, but it’s comparatively rare and may be too low-power to be useful anyway.)
The makers here have tuned BBC Radio 1 is at the center, which is 97.1 MHz? But that’ll work out to – let’s see – well:
- Radio Philippines Barangay LS
- Arab American University’s Ramallah Campus
- WXOX ratio in my hometown, apparently (not when I was a kid, but now, and sounds really cool – art and stuff!)
- Addis Ababa has FM Addis
- Berlin seems to lack something on this frequency, but Nürnberg-Schweinau has Radio Gong 97.1?
- And NYC, of course, has Hot 97!
If you’re in Ukraine, just tune up a little for KEXXX.Rocks.
Put some infrared in your Eurorack!
KOMA Elektronik is back in force, and if your budget is in the 30-bucks range, you’ll be glad to know they’ve got some gear for you. KOMMANDER, the company’s handheld “motion controller,” has long translated infrared range sensing into CV and gate. But now you get that same functionality in 1U, so you can make waving hand gestures at your Eurorack and it’ll respond.
Meet KMNDR, in just 8HP, ready for control and triggering. Two in stock as I write this, but backorders will be possible.
3-channel 1U mixing
Happy Nerding makes some nicely designed gear, and it seems they’ve packed their 3-channel mixer into 1U (with attenuverting knobs and 2-2-2 / 4-2 / 6 mix configurations). $100, easy. Let’s hope this encourages them to do more 1U, as I see a lot of stuff that’d fit. Seems this could work well for a custom setup – see also a headphones 1U unit; Beepboop does one that also fits into a cramped space, though if you have more HP, you might go with Intellijel (depending on which headphones you’re driving).
Details and reviews:
PSA
Now, to close, a friendly reminder from the voice of Maynardville (though you’ll need to wait for the 3U AM radio to tune this number in, I expect):
I expect Roy Acuff probably didn’t mean then chop and granulate what you hear and feed it into a tanx distortion, but you know, new generation and all that.