hardware karplus strong synth?

Hiya,

does anybody know if there are any more or less specifically karplus strong hardware synths?

Not purely Karplus-Strong, no. But you can do it with Nord Modular, real modular, and it is apparently possible on the Prophet 12:

Korg OASYS / physical modeling engines might be able to do it?

You can create a Karplus-Strong in a modular system by using a bucket bridge device as a delay in the loop back. Here you can see an example patch: http://www.doepfer.de/A1881.htm

With a p-lockable delay on the MonoMachine.

There's a many synths that CAN do it. Anything where you have a comb filter or delay line that can be controlled by key.

I think the Yamaha VL-1 was specifically designed to do this stuff.

korg z1

iirc rdj told in syrobonkers interview that he used z1 in fenix funk:

"theres a lot of ensoniq mirage in that tune as well and a z1 doing the karplus sounds"

  On 3/15/2015 at 4:44 PM, psn said:

With a p-lockable delay on the MonoMachine.

In my experience the control over the delay time is pretty coarse, though. Not unusable but it's not as simple as setting it as a key tracking destination.

  On 3/15/2015 at 7:24 PM, sweepstakes said:

 

  On 3/15/2015 at 4:44 PM, psn said:

With a p-lockable delay on the MonoMachine.

In my experience the control over the delay time is pretty coarse, though. Not unusable but it's not as simple as setting it as a key tracking destination.

 

Yeah, you need to use the 0-127 or whatever values to set the notes, so it's a bit finicky. But you'll get pretty close to a 12tet scale for a couple of octaves. Here's a table I made for the delay values and their corresponding notes.

Edit: And here is a snippet showing karpluss strong on the MnM. Two different tones, one is the metallic acid riff, and the other is the deep bass stabs. Both lines are recorded twice, through two different analog filters, and then stereo panned. The result is pretty cool and very physical sounding I think!

  On 3/15/2015 at 3:43 PM, mokz said:

You can create a Karplus-Strong in a modular system by using a bucket bridge device as a delay in the loop back. Here you can see an example patch: http://www.doepfer.de/A1881.htm

Thank you for this table.

  On 3/15/2015 at 7:56 PM, psn said:

 

Yeah, you need to use the 0-127 or whatever values to set the notes, so it's a bit finicky. But you'll get pretty close to a 12tet scale for a couple of octaves. Here's a table I made for the delay values and their corresponding notes.

 

 

Edit: And here is a snippet showing karpluss strong on the MnM. Two different tones, one is the metallic acid riff, and the other is the deep bass stabs. Both lines are recorded twice, through two different analog filters, and then stereo panned. The result is pretty cool and very physical sounding I think!

 

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1311883/mp3/watmm/psn%20-%20mnm%20karpluss.mp3

 

  On 3/15/2015 at 11:38 PM, Al N Aafiysh said:

 

Thank you for this table.

 

  On 3/15/2015 at 7:56 PM, psn said:

 

Yeah, you need to use the 0-127 or whatever values to set the notes, so it's a bit finicky. But you'll get pretty close to a 12tet scale for a couple of octaves. Here's a table I made for the delay values and their corresponding notes.

 

 

Edit: And here is a snippet showing karpluss strong on the MnM. Two different tones, one is the metallic acid riff, and the other is the deep bass stabs. Both lines are recorded twice, through two different analog filters, and then stereo panned. The result is pretty cool and very physical sounding I think!

 

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1311883/mp3/watmm/psn%20-%20mnm%20karpluss.mp3

 

 

pretty well covered already in here but here are some that haven't been, and the following require no work arounds or special patches or tricks, its all right out of the box ready to go


- MakeNoize makes the 'Mysterion' for eurorack which is allegedly a 'digital wave guide' synthesizer (like the yamaha Vl1) but it sounds to me like a souped up Karplus Strong
- Teenage Engineering Op-1 has as one of the synth engines a 'pluck' synth which sounds pretty typical digital karplus strong model
- Korg Oasys or Kronos, the keyboard's are very expensive still even on the used market but the Korg Oasys physical modeling is probably the most varied type of string plucking algorithm ive heard on a piece of hardware. The Korg PCI card can be obtained cheaply for around $200 but it requires the use of a windows 98 computer, so it doesnt really count as 'hardware'.
- Mutable Instruments Braids eurorack has a 'pluck' model as one of the choosable synth engines, sounds pretty much exactly the same as the most base level digital karplus style (like the Op1)

as other's have said, anything with a gritty sounding or BBD delay can be used like a karplus string with the right routing and patching, I think even some of the Dave Smith synths (like the poly evolver) can do it, but they aren't specifically designed to.

Is there a particular reason why you need a piece of hardware to do such a simplistic/early form of a physical modeling synthesis?

Yeah I would go software on this personally. Unless you're into eurorack (which I have near 0 knowledge about) you're going to get a lot more control and probably expressivity with software. There's the usual suspects like PD, Max, Reaktor, but I believe there's also plenty of VSTs around that specialize in PM. Tassman comes to mind - at least I think that's its bag.

there was a really good Reaktor patch that existed all the way back to Version 3 called 'Satin' which is probably the coolest Karplus strong based synth ive ever used. Instead of just using a single model it uses a bunch of combs to create these very rich sort of screeching chorus textures.

found it:

  Quote

 

 

Satin Beta 6:A hybird sample playback, physical modelling, digital synthesizer.Changes:All LFO sections now have "gang" controls where appliableAdded a Panner LFOSwitched from Linear Delay lines to Fractional Interpolating Delay Lines (had to reduce voice count by one, but the sound quality is much better in my opinion)A few new presets.Please send me some feedback on anything you can suggest, I welcome it!Thanks,Grusic aka |RaTeD-X|

http://www.native-instruments.com/en/community/reaktor-user-library/entry/show/1039/

Whoa, that's a lot of knobs...

BBDs are great at Karplus–Strong string synthesis, but good luck getting the clock rate to respond to a CV input at 1V/Oct. Your best bet is tuning it with a tuner (hardware or plug-in in your DAW), sampling all the Cs and F#s, and banging it into a sampler. Of course, you lose some nuance there, so you could do it the other way and record a different take for each unique pitch and tune in between each pass. That also works well for recording alternate tunings the cheap and difficult way. :)

  On 3/16/2015 at 7:24 PM, ZoeB said:

BBDs are great at Karplus–Strong string synthesis, but good luck getting the clock rate to respond to a CV input at 1V/Oct.

The Doepfer BBDs are 1V/oct. Not tracking 100% in tune, but pretty close.

  On 3/16/2015 at 7:40 PM, psn said:

The Doepfer BBDs are 1V/oct. Not tracking 100% in tune, but pretty close.

Those are the ones I use. It's been a while, but if my memory serves me correctly, you're right, they're close, but not really close enough to sound quite in tune. I guess it's a personal preference whether that's close enough or not.

i always found the doepfer BBDs to be great for melodic lead instruments, i do a lot of acidic lines with them going through an LPF. never had an issue with the 1v/oct sounding out of tune. Maybe your module needs to be re-calibrated ZoeB?