(see rating details)

Verified Purchaser zZounds has verified that this reviewer purchased this specific product from us.

The Pittsburgh Modular SV-1b is a wonderful subtractive East Coast-style synth. It gives you excellent implementations of all the basic modules you need to make thick analog synth sounds: 2 analog oscillators, an LFO for modulation, a digital LFO, a MIDI to CV module with an arpeggiator, the "Pittsburgh filter", an envelope generator, a VC amplifier, a panel of synthesizer tools (a noise generator, sample and hold, sub-1 and sub-2), a dual-dual mixer, a couple splitters, and output for both headphones and line out. These modules are all "normalized" so that by default it's patched together to make thick rich subtractive analog tones. But all those default "normalized" patches can be overridden (there are 50+ patch points), and you can change the synth configuration to any way you can imagine. Out of the box you only need to connect the SV-1b to any MIDI keyboard (the Arturia KeyStep is a good choice) and/or a MIDI computer interface as a note source. Now you are making music. As some point you may decide you want to expand with more modules. At which point the SV-1b can just pop out of its blackbox and into a Eurorack case. And voila, your rack will be already set to go with all the SV-1b's essential modules. You might compare the SV-1b to a Moog Mother-32. The Mother-32 is also a beautiful instrument and would also be an excellent introduction to East Coast analog modular, but the Mother-32 doesn't have two oscillators -- so fewer sound configuration options out of the box. The Mother-32 also doesn't have an arpeggiator -- an important tool for use with a monophonic synth. The Mother-32 does have a push-button keyboard and a basic sequencer, but both things are better handled by a KeyStep.