Metasonix Dual-VCO with Suboctave TM-3


Metasonix Dual-VCO with Suboctave TM-3

At last, a pitch source with tube power. And extreme sound. The METASONIX TM-3 is the only voltage-controlled oscillator on the market with an all-tube signal path. It consists of two thyratron tube sawtooth oscillators, which are wired in parallel but may be offset with their individual front-panel tuning controls. Furthermore, soft sync is available, to force oscillator 2 to track with oscillator 1. The waveform produced by the 2D21/5727 thyratrons is unique and distinctive--a very imperfect sawtooth. It's the kind of sound that screams "VINTAGE", because the only other instruments that produce it are vintage ones--the Mixtur-Trautonium, the Univox, and some 1950s electronic organs. Furthermore, there is a suboctave circuit, which adds a square wave one octave below oscillator 2. It includes short pulses an octave above, for a distinctive sound. And you can mess with the STABILITY control to get unique effects--because the suboctave divider is made of two neon lamps, and NOT a transistor flip-flop. Except for the CV driver, the TM-3 is all tubes. And unlike most other synthesizer VCOs, the TM-3 is so sensitive that it is easily used for FM sound effects--simply by driving either CV input with a line-level audio signal. Both inputs are DC coupled and highly sensitive. The result is a unique, and very extreme, form of signal distortion.

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