Back in 1996, this rackmount beast emerged from a London studio prototype that quickly became indispensable for tracking albums, laying the groundwork for those iconic filtered sweeps on seminal dance records.
It's a stereo analog effects unit packing two independent 24dB/octave low-pass filters built around classic SSM 2045 chips, each paired with its own envelope follower, voltage-controlled amplifier, and LFO offering triangle, square, ramp up, and ramp down waveforms. The chunky black front panel brims with oversized black knobs for hands-on tweaks like sensitivity, attack, release, cutoff, resonance, envelope sweep (positive or negative), and LFO rate plus depth, alongside sturdy metal toggle switches for gate/envelope modes, VCA engagement, and LFO linking or inverting between channels. Rear panels host stereo audio in/out, sidechain external inputs for alternate envelopes, CV jacks for filter control from modular gear or MIDI-CV converters, and optional MIDI for note-triggered gates, pitch-bend sweeps, mod wheel resonance, and volume via CC7. LFO speeds range from a languid 0.1Hz to zippy 100Hz, perfect for everything from subtle tremolo to wild self-oscillating pulses.
Players love its raw, grab-and-go analog character for fattening loops, ducking frequencies, or stereo-imaging drums and guitars—Daft Punk, Fatboy Slim, and Depeche Mode all leaned on it hard. Sure, the fixed MIDI mappings can feel quirky without remapping, but that hasn't dimmed its status as a live-performance filter king.
