Wing Pinger

Imagine a synthesizer that skips oscillators entirely, letting a pair of self-oscillating filters do all the talking through clever feedback and pings— that's the magic at the heart of this instrument, turning plucks into chaos or melody with a single touch.

At its core, two 4-pole resonant lowpass filters form a feedback FM loop via shift registers, comparators, and logic circuits, where each filter modulates the other's cutoff for everything from gentle modal resonances to wild, autonomous snarls. A capacitive touch keyboard on the right lets you play tonally, with modes for pinging (polyphonic MIDI notes), arpeggiating (monophonic), or latching patterns—toggle via octave pads and a mode button. Controls are finely tuned knobs for cutoff, resonance, and feedback depth on each filter, plus CV/Gate, clock/trigger I/O, and step outputs to drive modular gear. It rocks dual 1/4" audio ins/outs, TRS MIDI in/out, and USB, powered by a 12V center-positive supply; banana or minijack versions slot perfectly into Buchla or Eurorack ecosystems as a semi-modular percussion beast.

Players love its organic shift from predictable plucks to unpredictable rhythms, praising the expressive touch and robust patching, though some note the learning curve for taming the chaos into full tracks.