Gotharman’s Spazedrum, Analog Drum Synth Now In Black With New Filters & Touch Screen

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The Gotharman’s Spazedrum drum Synthesizer gets a black version with new, cleaner filters & a touch screen for a better workflow

Already in April, I reported about the Spazedrum, a complex 4-voice analog drum Synthesizer/drum machine from the Danish boutique manufacturer Gotharman’s. My YouTube colleague The Tuesday Night Machines has produced many excellent videos for this, where you get a detailed overview of the features and the sound.

Now there is surprisingly another version of the Spazedrum in the works that differs not only in color. Not blue but black and features a different analog circuitry. Instead of the dual SSI2144 filters, the new Spazedrum black uses two SSI2140 filter chips per voice.

Gotharmans SpazeDrum Black

Different Filters, Different Sound

According to the developer, both instruments will sound different. The blue has the crunchy Gotherman sound, while Black has a cleaner sound. Other differences are that the analog filters of the Blue have a fixed slope of 24dB, while on Black the slope can be set to 6, 12, or 18 dB. There is also a new addition to the analog oscillator in the Black version. It is now possible to add harmonics to the sound in 4 steps.

Analog Meets Digital

The rest of the engine remains: it has 4 analog voices, that each has 4 parts, 16 parts in total that can be set in different modes. The analog modes are based on two analog percussion oscillators (different parameters for each mode) paired with a digital multi-mode oscillator.

  • analog percussion: kicks, snares, analog hi-hats, toms, claps, noise…
  • analog cymbal: cymbals, hi-hats, noises…
  • analog clap: hand-claps, noises…

The fourth mode “Synthesizer” is based on two digital multi-mode oscillators (waveform, resonator, percussion OSC, cymbal OSC, clap OSC, and sampler) which are also included in the analog part. In this mode, however, they go into two analog lowpass filters with separate cutoff and resonance controls, and G-Ray feedback. Like the analog oscillators, it offers several ways to shape the sound including FM, crossfade…

Gotharmans Spazedrum Black

The signals then go in two digital multimode filters (parallel) to shape the sound further. Both oscillators in both filters or oscillator 1 in filter 1, and oscillator 2 to filter. After the filters, the sound can be manipulated further with 2 insert effect processors that can be set for each of the 4 analog voices. Each analog voice has 2 insert effects, 8 in total. They range from chorus, distortion, bit crush, pitch shifters, time-stretch, delays, parametric EQ, filters, compressor… Up to 3 parameters can be modulated and each insert effect  can be placed before or after the VCA. Here you also have envelopes to shape the VCA signal.

2 additional output effect processors are located in the last stage of the audio chain where each part can be sent to one or both of these: reverb, delays, granulators, sample pitch…  Spazedrum Black also features a sequencer with 16 tracks with 64 steps. Each track has 5 sub-tracks for note, gate, velocity, position, and sub-position and you can also record up to 4 parameters as automation.

The Gotharman’s Spazedrum Black and Blue is not one of the simple drum machines with a view to the features. It is extremely versatile and goes very deep into the synthesis.

Gotharman’s Spazedrum Black is available now for pre-order for 1394€ (10% OFF).

More information here: Gotharman’s

Hardware Drum Machines 

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