Yes, you have VCAs - but none like this
I won't repeat the old motto: you can never have enough VCAs. You can. You probably have enough clean, well-behaved VCAs that show up, do the job and never cause any trouble. But this, this, is not that. This is Optika - an optical VCA, built with our very own handmade vactrols. It's got all the vactrol character you love, delightfully non-linear and easily pushed into overdrive for interesting harmonics.
Dual optical VCA - enjoy the natural sound of vactrols
Colorful sound - decidedly non-transparent VCA which imparts character
Handmade vactrols - get them before they're outlawed forever
These vactrols don't bleed - that's right, they fully close
Two channels of drunken muscle that help you turn even a clock signal into organic plucks. The kind of slewy, chewy stuff that makes envelopes of gates, the kind that overdrives and gives you stink-face, the kind that de-sterilizes your digital waveforms, the kind that's got home made vactrols with no palm oil inside them, the kind that makes you fall in love with vactrols all over again.
If I haven't convinced you at this point, nothing will. Go make ordinary music with clean, boring VCAs, I can't stop you - only you can make that choice.
Shush! With Stum it's easy to tame your audio and signals in a soft and gentle manner - four mechanical switches make it easy to quickly turn an incoming signal on or off, and an adjacent LED makes it immediately obvious whether signal is currently passing or not, so performing even in the dark is no challenge at all.
High quality and generously sized mechanical switches sit flat against the panel to prevent accidents, and give you tactile feedback when muting and unmuting, even an audible click - unlike in your output, where you can look forward to no clicks, no abruptly truncated transients and no signal passing when you least want it to. These mutes close and open fully, and in between offer a smooth and pleasant fade-in and fade-out transition thanks to the vactrols assigned to controlling the mute.
Fully analog and built with reliability and longevity in mind, the Stum will be the perfect companion for anyone seeking a small and reliable solution to control their incoming and outgoing signals without fear of clicking, actuation noise, bleed or other unpleasantness.
The module comes with the latching switches.
Push button, receive gate and trigger signal.
Okay, that's an oversimplification, but not by much. Altered States is a manual gate and trigger generator that allows you to generate gates and triggers, manually, by hand. The gates and triggers are not hand made, of course, those are made electronically by the circuit within, but you're in control of how and when they happen thanks to the buttons.
Operation is simple: the top button is latching, the lower button is momentary. Each button has three outputs: one which generates a gate when the button is depressed, one which generates a gate when the button is not depressed, and one that generates a trigger in response to the former. Use it to flip/flop between patches, trigger events coincident with turning something on or off, temporarily mute (or unmute) CV or audio, generate your own trigger patterns, the possibilities are limited only by your own creativity.
Generates independent 5v gates in both button states (high and low)
Generates a trigger upon button presses
LEDs visually indicate the current state of any given output
All that, and in just 3hp - create syncopations, tap your way into rhythms, trigger events, flip/flop, trigger logic modules, and all of it by hand, giving you new creative options during performance.
Did you know? During development, the module was called Pusher in reference to the Nicholas Winding Refn trilogy which takes place here, on Amager, where Herzlich Labs modules are hand-built in a torchlit cave on a saber-tooth tiger pelt, using hot rocks for a soldering iron.
OR? Or what, buddy?
Sometimes, you can’t have it all—it’s one or the other. That’s often the case with logic signals, like gates, clocks, and triggers, and mixing them can lead to unintended and undesirable side effects. The simple solution is the clever application of a bit of logic—OR logic.
An analog logic circuit designed for CV, clock, gate, and triggers.
Use it as a dual 3:1 logic, or leave Output A unplugged to use it as 6:1 logic.
It only passes the strongest current signal while blocking others.
It’s a passive design, so it draws no power from your case.
Trigger patterns, gates, clock, and all fall well in control with the OR. Use the fact that stronger signals take priority to your advantage and attenuate signals that you want to take less priority to build interesting patterns with this analog logic device.
Not experimental enough? Send audio through! You’ll get some very interesting harmonics as all negative waveforms are hard-clipped, and the strongest amplitudes will continuously take precedence over other inputs. You may just discover sounds no one had dared dream of.
What you do now is up to you—or is it?
For once, there isn't much to say - what you see is exactly what you get. Four passive attenuators, in 4hp. Perhaps the most useful utility in any system, and here, you get four of them! Fully open, fully closed, or somewhere in between, Qatt will put your signal exactly where you want it to be.
Choose something. Choose nothing.
There was a philosopher who wrote a book about how to live your life in the 1840s. He wrote it from the perspective of two different people, who had vastly different answers to Aristotle's question, "How should we live?"
What he did not account for, however, was the sheer power of the passive OR logic node. Had he known about this, I am certain he would have reached a different conclusion at the end of his book, safe in the knowledge that you can combine up to 8 different CV, trigger and clock signals (audio, too, if you're OK with half-wave rectification) and freely assign them to either bus A or B right at the end, in order to generate complex modulations, rhythms and much more.
• Analog logic circuit designed for CV, clock, gate and triggers
• Eight inputs which can be freely assigned to output A or B
• Only passes the strongest currently present signal, while blocking others
• Passive design: draws no power from your case
Choppy waves. Calm waves. Square waves?
Listen, there's a reason why if you go out to the sea that the waves out there aren't square, okay? Nature doesn't like to expend energy like that. Nature prefers the path of least resistance. Nice, round sine waves. But not you! You like to expend energy on making cool wave shapes, don't you? Well, I have good news for you - while energy credits are not yet an option, you can expend money to get cool wave shapes right here, thanks to the modestly sized High Sea passive waveshaper.
It also works like a passive VCA, sort of, if you connect it in reverse. It's very temperamental, and likes some audio and CV sources more than others. Your results may vary - or surprise you. It's first and foremost a fun little waveshaper, the other part is more of a cute oddity the same way that a benign but conspicuous growth on your arm can be a good conversation starter at a party.
• Fold and bend wave forms into new, exciting shapes
• Create delicious harmonics where there previously were none
• Connect it in reverse to unleash it's powers as a VCA (terms and conditions apply)
• Passive design: draws no power from your case
The Pivot is a simple module, dedicated to doing one thing really well: panning and balancing.
The long and smoothly controlled fader makes it easy to strike the right balance between the input and the two outputs, which continuously share each their portion of the input signal. With input buffering and a dual-gang potentiometer, the signal for one channel will fully close at either extreme end and perform with perfect consistency when you need it most.
Use it for panning, wet/dry control, transitioning between different audio or CV destinations - or even just as an attenuator in a pinch. The Pivot isn't the most complicated panner and balance mixer on the market, but rock solid build quality, design and component choices make it a reliable companion in any performance setup.
Introducing the Cortisol Legend: a spiritual successor to one of my early designs, the Steroid Legend, it presents as 4hp of white hot saturation and hairy distortion, and features manual control over two op-amp driven gain stages, with a diode saturation control in the middle, giving you precise control over distortion ranging from smoldering saturation all the way into utter rail-to-rail fuzzification.
The First Aid Kit is here to be your first choice, regardless of whether you're picking out your first utility module, building a minimal system or expanding a large system, by offering a powerhouse toolbox built on the principle of "everything you need, nothing you don't."
Offering ten functions in just 8hp, you can feel assured that you are no longer likely to run into dead ends while patching, because you need just one more utility - no need to buy lots of specialized utility units either, which can be both costly and space ineffecient, as you get all in one with the First Aid Kit.
Followers of the brand may notice that I have something of a fascination with LPGs - it's true. But until now, my LPGs have relied on unique designs, whereas this one should be far more familiar to other LPG fans. The classic passive LPG, but with the utmost care taken to hand-craft the ideal version of this device.
With WIMA capacitors, custom built vactrols and exceptional little details like an LED window to get visual feedback on your CV input, the Herzlich Labs Dual Low Pass Gate is the final word in the realm of classic, passive LPGs. Every detail has been cared for, down to high-end hardware and switches to round out the experience, all in a narrow 2hp without any compromises made with respect to the form factor.
I put off making a passive LPG like this one for a long time, because I wanted the result to be the absolute best I could make it. Many designs, components and iterations were rejected, so I could bring you this - the LPG boasts two identical channels, with three cutoff settings per channel. The middle setting will behave like a VCA, while the left and right settings will have the familiar LPG sound. Care has been taken to reduce bleed, but as it is a classic passive VCA, some small amounts of audible bleed can be expected from the circuit.
Each Dual Low Pass Gate is built by hand and personally tested, to assure the high quality of these units. You can feel confident that exceptional care has been taken to bring you the most exceptional passive LPG experience possible, with the Herzlich Dual Low Pass Gate.
Size: 2 HP
Fade between two signals with the fader, just as nature intended
Do you have aspirations to smoothly fade between two signals? Then I have fantastic news for you, my friend. The Herzlich Crossfade lets you do exactly that, and exactly nothing else, using well-designed active circuitry and a smooth and performance friendly sliding potentiometer.
Whatever your aspirations are, this crossfader lets you live out your crossfading dreams in the simplest possible way, with not a fraction of an inch wasted on unnecessary features. Only delightful build quality and pleasantly smooth crossfading lies ahead for you.
Size: 2 HP
A 4x4 Matrix Mixer without the pesky knobs that get in your way
Do you like getting... mixed up? Perhaps you will enjoy the new 4x4 Switch Matrix from Herzlich Labs. It's a 4x4 matrix mixer, but not quite like how you usually see them. You see, all the pots are gone from this one, and replaced with switches. A daring innovation from your friends at the Laboratory, and an excellent partner for the the newly released mApnea.
Use it with triggers, gates, CV or, yes, even audio. The Switch Matrix will not be particular about the input, though who can say what output you will get? With neatly arranged rows and columns, this matrix mixer takes up only 8hp, and shimmering LEDs make it easy to determine what's live - and what's not - even in the pitch darkness of your chambers.
Explore what other matrix mixers dare not: developing rhythms, unusual trigger sequences, strange gates and combined LFOs, or patch in audio for the ultimate thrill: that which has no volume control.
Size: 8HP
You've got triggers, gates, clocks and other such binary signals that you want to mix - but you'd much prefer if they did not interact and interrupt each other!
What you need is OR logic - and this passive OR logic in 2hp makes it easy to mix up to four signals in one, and even allows you to switch any off the signals on or off at will. Your trigger sequencing will become truly next level.
The ABCD/OR: It's the logical choice.
Size: 2 HP
The mApnea is designed in cooperation with Rakt to create a simple, modular and extensible utility mixing system. The features are numerous and the use cases multitudes, among them:
Apnea-style performance mute for quick and silent muting of both audio and control signals during performance.
Long slide attenuator for fine attenuation control.
Reversible front panel and slide pot: easily flip the orientation of the double-sided front panel, or switch the direction of the slide pot with a microswitch on the back.
Passive design and 2hp width makes integration easy and flexible in any system, even in an auxiliary pod.
Integrates seamlessly with audio interfaces, mixers and other modules: combine them with any module like the Expert Sleepers ES-9 or Herzlich Labs Active Mix to create performance mixers of any size, or use it alone as a performance attenuator or master volume control.
Why bother shopping for one massive performance mixer after the other, when you can simply build the exact solution to match your needs, with Herzlich Labs.
Size: 2 HP
Get REAL buff with Herzlich Labs' Buffered Multiple
The simple, but mighty, buffered multiple in beautiful black and gold. You know you want it, you want to get REAL buff, and this mult will get you there and a bit further still.
Unlike other companies, Herzlich Labs loves you, and will not lie: there is not much special about our buffered mult compared to others, except that ours is remarkably beautiful, and our customer service is second to none. Built by hand by a lapsed office worker turned electronics engineer by night, you will certainly feel the hopeful spirit of this device as you install it in your rack.
The buffered multiple is useful when multiplying voltages that are sensitive to changes, such as volt-per-octave applications, and situations where you need to create a buffer between modules. This can come in handy more often than you might think.
The time for words is over, now is the time for action. Purchasing action. Go ahead, you know you need this.
Size: 2 HP
Beauty. Refinement. Attenuversion.
It's another Herzlich Labs release: the 2hp stereo Attenuverter. Two channels of connected attenuversion, allowing you to fully and smoothly invert any signals you plug in - turn negative to positive, turn phase to antiphase, and find all the variations in between.
With the usual pleasantly tactile sliding pot, the sAttenuverter is both performance friendly and inspiring to use. Extremely suitable for linked mono signals and stereo alike, it will feel right at home in the increasingly popular stereo setups in modular.
Size: 2 HP
A Stereo Mixer with four channels and visual indicators