Bad Dog Designs OSPRAY-8, new vintage analog drum Synthesizer with 8 channels

Bad Dog Designs OSPRAY-8 is a new vintage analog drum Synthesizer with eight independent drum channels packed with hands-on control.

Many people love drum machines, and they are essential to electronic music. Today, you can find a wide variety of drum machines on the market, from vintage to ultra-modern digital. Pure drum synthesizers that work without an internal sequencer are less common.

I’m happy to report that there’s a new one from Bad Dog Designs from the UK.

Bad Dog Designs OSPRAY-8

OSPRAY-8 is a new analog drum Synthesizer with eight channels housed in a free-standing desktop case. Bad Dog Designs OSPRAY-8 8 relies on circuit designs that were over 40 years old, published originally in the E&MM magazine. 

Paul, the designer, has recreated and refined these and put them into a new vintage analog drum Synthesizer. I call it vintage because it is based on old circuits that have been revived, and the design is also old school analog with no menu diving.

The sound is produced by eight flexible all-analog modules connected, comprising four drum modules, three cymbal modules, and a handclap module.

Although the four drum modules look identical to me and offer the same parameters, you can craft very different sounds with each one. Thanks to full access to the analog synthesis, you have much more flexibility than with limited drum machines like the TR-808 or 909.

You can craft your own drum sounds by tweaking the decay, bend, t-pitch, mix, n-pitch, volume, and the pan of each drum module.

Then, the cymbal modules offer control over the pitch, decay, and sweep. Additionally, it has a built-in multimode filter with lowpass, bandpass, and highpass options. They are controllable with classic parameters like cutoff, resonance, and mix. Plus, you have a dedicated volume and pan.

There is only a single CLAP module, and it features three clap variations (1, 2, 4), a spread control, a built-in filter, ambiance, volume, and pan control. 

Connectivity

Each module of the Bad Dog Designs OSPRAY-8 drum Synthesizer has its own trigger input and button with which you can trigger the sounds manually.

Alongside this, each sound generator also has its own 3.5mm mono socket audio output, giving you flexible routing options. The other connections are located on the side of the case.

Further, you can find here 5-pin MIDI IN and THRU sockets for triggering the sounds with MIDI, a stereo output on two 3.5mm mono outputs, a channel select switch, and a power supply input.

First Impression

At first glance, it’s a nice new analog drum synthesizer. The character sounds very vintage to me, and I like that it’s 100% hands-on, without any menu or shift buttons.

Bad Dog Designs OSPRAY-8 is available now for £795, $1017,60 or 910€ and is hand-built in the UK.

More information here: Bad Dog Designs

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