Whimsical Raps, makers of such fine but initially mysterious things as Just Friends, Mangrove, Three Sisters and Cold Mac, has announced a new one.
It scans/mixes smoothly through six inputs using the Spot knob (an endless analog pot) to the Light output, and runs that through an analog BBD for the Shadow output. That’s the “foreground.” The Spot CV input is normalled to a “magnetic attractor” modulation source for some interesting varieties of animation.
The remaining inputs that don’t appear in the foreground become the background, and are rotated through the left/right outputs. Lens controls its level, and can sidechain the background to the foreground or expand its dynamics. Blur seems to be some kind of low-fi filtered reverb. Then you can mix the foreground into the L/R outputs, or leave them solely on the Light and Shadow outputs.
There are no feedback paths built in, but it’s made for self-patching and feedback exploration, and seems like it could be quite powerful.
The inputs are DC-coupled, so it should also be able to combine and transform modulation sources. Or reverse the sense of things and modulate Spot with an audio rate signal while the inputs are changing much more slowly.
This goes on sales Dec 30, and if it doesn’t sell out first I plan to get one. If it does, hopefully the next round of production won’t take too long — WR has been better in the last year or so at keeping their always-in-demand stuff in stock.
I’m thinking this can replace Bunker Archeology. But also, scanning/crossfading between outputs from Just Friends, Zorlon Cannon etc. is 90% of what I use my Planar for, so it could pull that out instead.