The Barcelona-based synth companies Winter Modular & Plankton Electronics have teamed for ZAPS, a new analog percussive module with digital control for Superbooth 21.
A trend of the Superbooth 21 is already crystallizing out. Superbooth 20 Home Edition was the show of the new stereo filters. It looks like the Superbooth 21 will be one of the drum/percussion modules.
After FaseLunare, WMD, Happy Nerding, another will premiere at SB 21. Winter Modular and Plankton Electronics, both developers from Barcelona, have teamed up to create ZAPS.
ZAPS
Winter Plankton is a new brand, born from the collaboration between Winter modular, Plankton Electronics, and Product designer and musician Miguel Eedl. The minds behind Eloquencer, Spice, and Ants! have teamed up to bring a modern take on the concept of electronic percussion
Update
Zaps is a percussion-line synth voice designed for creating organic sequences that can mutate over time. It uses a combination of different techniques like controlled randomness, morphing, and storing (or locking) of synth-voice parameters in slots that can be externally sequenced.
The module consists of a digitally controlled two triangle-core oscillator FM and AM analog engine with two envelopes and cross-modulation. It comes with a wide range of waveforms (sine, triangle, sawtooth, square, double sine, and White Noise), and two AHR envelopes with continuously variable slopes. Thanks to AM, FM, and XFM cross-modulation, the module is capable of creating rich percussive sounds.
The control is digital, which has many advantages. You can save patches straight on an SD card, deep randomization (independent random of each parameter or entire slots/banks with random sounds), parameter & slot morphing, and more. The module gives you CV control of any parameter and CV out to control external modules.
Some Creative Extras
- Sequence Preset Slots externally for changing percussion or synth lines
- Add subtle randomness to any parameter for slightly changing sounds, or go wild for unpredicted surprises on every trigger
- Assign Accent to any parameter for added expressiveness
- Capture any randomly generated sound into a preset slot for further editing
- Freeze/Revert the state of the module for careless editing during live performance
- Live editing of a single or multiple slots simultaneously for expressive tweaking
- Generate melodic percussion or synth lines with the V/O tracked oscillators
News September 11, 2021
There is currently just a single image about the new module from the Spanish developers Winter Modular and Plankton Electronics. It looks like it is a powerful percussive module with two layers (P1/P2). Two because it only has a single trigger input and a single output. According to the developer, it will have an analog synth engine. I’m assuming a complex one as it has a rich set of hands-on features: freeze, morph, sound, random, AM, FM, and more.
ZAPS is also CV-controllable with 6 CV inputs on the left side. I really like that module has many sliders on board to shape the sound. It’s definitely not a small module but this and the sliders indicate that it is very hands-on and playable. Please more modules with sliders. So I assume that you can also save drum sounds as a patch in the module
It looks like a super versatile drum synth module. Looking forward to check it out.
The first batch of Winter Plankton ZAPS will be available in the first quarter of 2022 and premiere at Superbooth 21. Both companies will be at Superbooth and can be found in the booths Z205, and Z195. You can pre-order it now for 485€.
More information here: Winter Modular/Plankton Electronics
I’m into sounds more then ever right now