freeta corrective

I recently went back to blighty and got myself a waldorf blofeld from the lovely people at Absolute Music. Due to the current crappiness of the pound against the yen, and as foreign-made synths are subject to a whopping mark-up here in Japan, I saved some cash.

I know there are loads of great reviews of this synth out there – so I’m not going to try and out do any of them here. I don’t have tons of hardware, not because I dislike it, but it’s just too pricey for me. I looked at lots of different options and different synths before I thought about buying the blofeld – and I think I’ve made a very good choice.

It is a fantastic synth. I’ve had it for just over a week and it’s amazingly cool. I learnt all my synth basics on rolands and yamahas – and then later on through using VSTs. Like many people on this site, I’ve used lots of different types and flavours of synthesis over the years. And that’s why I like the blofeld so much. It is very versatile – capable of producing warmth and mystery as well as stroppy, grainy, crunchy madness. The interface, to my mind, is the perfect trade-off between its size and depth.

I know it’s not a real analogue like the evolver, but the oscillators do sound really really good. So do the filters – the PPG LP is awesome, and combined with the drive curves, the filters can really sing out.

The clincher for me is the modulation routing. 16 modulation slots (!), versatile LFOs, modifiers and full MIDI control make this thing a must buy. You can go very deep into patch architecture and implement some very interesting things. Variable FM, LFOs as oscillators, cross-modding LFOs with XOR, NOR, AND etc.

All in all, wicked. Put it on your Christmas wishlist.