Erica Synths has released reissues of the classic Hexinverter Mutant drum synth modules (bassdrum, clap, snare, and hi-hats) for Eurorack.
In September 2022, the Canadian company Hexinverter Electronique announced closing down its operation. This was sad news, as the modules were very popular then and are still today. Erica Synths then decided to take over the portfolio and reissue them step by step.
Many popular Hex modules have already been re-released. Today, four more popular Hexinverter modules, the Mutant drum series, return under the direction of Erica Synths.
Erica Synths Hexinverter Mutant Drum Series
To be precise, four Mutant Drum Modules are returning: Bassdrum, Snare, and Clap; the four modules use analog circuits that drew on ideas from the legendary Roland TR-808 and TR-909 drum machines but with expanded and refined feature sets for Eurorack workflows.
All four modules have the original 13HP format and feature set of the original Hexinverter versions. However, Erica Synths redesigned them in collaboration with the original developers.
Mutant Bass Drum – Mutant Snare
The Mutant Bassdrum is the first module in the new Erica Synths Hexinverter Mutant Drum series. It’s based on analog bass-drum circuitry capable of vanilla TR-808 sounds. You can tweak it on the hardware with tone, decay, and pitch controls.
The Mutant Bassdrum also features a built-in voltage-controlled distortion (batteryACID distortion). Clever, it also has an external input, so you can use it as a distortion unit when not used as a kick drum module. You get independent clean and distorted signal outputs besides its solid CV connectivity (dist CV, decay CV…).
The Mutant Snare is a snare generator module that uses analog bridged sinewave oscillators to achieve the classic 808 snares and beyond.
The module gives you complete control over your snare sounds with various parameters: shell tone and pitch, snappy adds some noise, decay envelope, overdrive, and filter with three resonance settings: classic 808 (low resonance), high resonance, and self-oscillation.
Nice, you can customize the snappy generator by routing any sound source via the external input. CV control on the Mutant Snare is a bit limited with just inputs for the decay and cutoff.
Mutant Clap – Mutant Hi-Hats
The new Erica Synths Hexinverter Mutant Drum series includes two more modules. The third module is the Mutant Clap, inspired by the famous Roland TR-909 drum machine, but with features we all wished the original had.
It combines a voltage-controlled LFSR noise generator and a powerful percussion synthesis engine.
You can tweak it with various controls, such as noise pitch, which gives various possible tones, drive, bandpass filter cutoff, sustain envelope, reverb decay, and more.
Indeed, an internal reverb is onboard derived from the clap tone. You can select between internal and external noise sources for the reverb sound generation. An external input allows you to synthesize claps from virtually any sound source you plug in.
On the connectivity side, it gives you a main output and independent outs for the noise and filter. CV control is available for the reverb decay and pitch.
Finally, the fourth and last Erica Synths Hexinverter Mutant Drum module is the Mutant Hi-Hats. Its analog hihat circuitry is inspired by the famous Japanese drum machine with the two 8s, but Hexinverter supercharged it with new features.
It is capable of generating open and closed hi-hat sounds simultaneously. You can add analog drive to each hihat sound with dedicated controls. So you can get anything from soft metallic to extremely overdriven, crunchy hi-hats. Plus, you can tweak them with a resonant bandpass filter and decay.
Also, you can route in external sources that synthesize hi-hats from virtually any sound source in the Mutant Hi-Hats. In the middle of the module is a switch that lets you select how the two hi-hats interact with each other when triggered at the same time.
The module offers independent outs for hi-hats and CV control over the decay. As with the other three Mutant Drum modules, Erica Synths has redesigned the original Hexinverter Mutant Hi-hat. For example, they replaced cheap transistor amplifiers with low noise opamp and OTA equivalents.
Erica Synths Hexinverter Mutant Drum: First Impression
Great news from Erica Synths today. I’m glad that the popular Mutant Drum modules are back. They are very versatile hands-on modules that do not overwhelm the user with features.
Erica Synths Hexinverter Mutant Drum series is available now. Each module (Bass Drum, Snare, Clap, Hihats) costs 180€ + VAT + shipping. or get them all for 600€ + VAT + shipping.
More information here: Erica Synths
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