John Blacet sends an update on his extreme excess synth module design contest.

Blacet recently announced a contest to solve an interesting design problem: create a synth module with a predetermined panel layout:

“We have an extreme excess of Multi panels (do to a series of unfortunate events!).

Rather than toss them, perhaps someone out there can figure out a module that would use *only* the existing holes (we can strip and rescreen the printing).

There are 5 jack holes and one pot hole.

You don’t have to draw up any schematics; just figure out the general purpose and label the panel.

I don’t know what the prize will be yet but it will be something good, depending on the “brilliance” of the concept.

Give synth fans a difficult problem, offer them something vague in return, and what do you get?

In this case, dozens of module designs.

In fact, it looks like Blacet may need to have a few more unfortunate events in order to have enough excess panels to produce just a few of the designs.

The suggested designs include:

• A clock module
• A gate delay type of thingy (that’s modular synth talk)
• The dragon whisp
• Materioptikon (Phase anti-cancel)
• Haaspertame (Haas effect stereo sweetener)
• Source of only a little certainty, or “Wogglito”
• MultiTap Splitter
• Simple VCO
• VC Quadrature Generator
• A clocked random pulse generator
• Micro Frequency Divider
• Chord generator
• and just about anything else under the sun.

The proposed designs are available for review at the Blacet site.