Is This The Worst Eurorack Module Ever?

Virginia-based Wildfire Laboratories has introduced a new module, Commodity Fetishism, that promises to damage or destroy your modular synthesizer.

Commodity Fetishism shorts the +12, -12, and GND pins of your eurorack system’s power supply together via an SPST switch. Install the module, power on your system, and toggle the switch, and you will, according to the company, “destroy your power supply and…damage most of your pre-existing modules or, at the worst, destroy them outright.”

They caution:

“Wildfire Laboratories has no way of fully determining the result of you flipping the switch – we can, however, confirm that the switch used is rated up to 126 volts at 6 amps – far greater than any Eurorack system can supply. We can thus say with confidence that the module will perform as intended and create the aforementioned connection.

Wildfire Laboratories bears absolutely no responsibility for the result of using this module. By purchasing this device you confirm that you have read this documentation and fully understand the results of using this device as intended.”

Pricing and Availability

The Commodity Fetishism is available now for $50 USD.

 

51 thoughts on “Is This The Worst Eurorack Module Ever?

        1. It obviously struck some nerve with you since you felt the need to announce your boycott of a company you probably had never heard of before this over what is very clearly a joke.

  1. Perfect for the husband/wife/significant other…. Your partner has repeatedly express the feeling that the you are WAY to Euro obsessed! Imagine coming home from a long day at the office and finding dinner is ready (“Honey! I’m home!!!”)… you briefly visit your prize collection in your studio and find this installed module….. and perhaps the smell of fried electronics and ozone! :-}.

  2. I’ve long pondered that Eurorack is ripe for ‘gimmick’ modules – how about a spacer module that looks like a CRM-114? – but as gimmicks go, this one kinda blows. Sorry.

  3. I can’t see this doing any real damage tbh; the worst I can see it doing is popping the PSU, and most power supplies have overload/short circuit protection these days anyway. if you actually wanted to do some damage, you’d be better off using a similar method to the USB killer sticks; charge up a capacitor bank to high voltage, and dump it on the power rails

  4. Just wrap a bare wire around the hot and neutral (or hot, natural and ground) pins on you power plug and plug it into the wall. There ya go: Smoldering pile of junk that was once a synthesizer. And it was free …unless you have to buy about 3″ of wire, in which case it probably will cost you about $.005.

    But if you must spend $50 you can send it to me for the advice. Heck, I will even send you the wire, included, no extra charge

  5. Why not just throw your rack onto your driveway and drive over it a few times, then see if it still works? That’s gotta be more fun than flipping a switch? Or how about place it in your electric clothing dryer and run it on the “steam” mode for a few mins? Even better – put it in the microwave on the baked potato setting for a random number of milliseconds, or just until something interesting happens. With any of those options, you’d save some money… but the upside of just buying this thing is you would have a new piece of gear.

  6. I can think of a few “artists” whose “music” would benefit from such a device. I’ll buy half a dozen to be going on with, and pop them in the post, gift-wrapped.

    1. You are god damn right! It’s about time that we, the real Artists organise ourselves to chose who can claim to be a real Artist, and kick those so called “artists” out of here and thrash their “music” into oblivion. Let’s burn their “instruments”! Let’s create the AAA”a” – the Artists Associated Against the “artists”. A bright future is ahead!

  7. This was Banksy’s idea with the art work that shredded at auction time. The half shredded picture was re-sold at an even higher price recently.

  8. What if you accidentally stumbled upon the most breathtaking, harmonically enchanting, mesmerizing patch ever created by man that was so perfect (and never intended to be discovered by mortals), it put you into a trance. A trance so intense that you could feel yourself slipping into a coma and on your way into the bright light of the afterlife. Your body, before going completely numb & lifeless, has one last motor function available and it’s just one hand. As the darkness at the edge of your vision closes in… as the moments of your childhood replay in vivid detail while your mother’s voice sings you to sleep… as you fall to the ground in slow motion, you flail your only hand wildly and clumsily toward the only switch that can keep you here: The Wildfire Laboratories Commodity Fetishism.

  9. Don’t laugh. I have the equivalent of this on my test bench to allow me to short and reverse power supplies on prototype designs. We also have an ESD simulator gun that lets me put 15 kV through the case, controls and cable connections. There are some other nasty power line lab tests required for CE certification, too, but I have to sacrifice one or two of our production prototypes to the gods of EMI and ESD in the lab for those.

  10. Finally the perfect module I need for my performance of Cage’s 4’33. I think I will fill my whole eurorack with them, I want a nice fat silence.

  11. Questi eccessi nell’arte elettronica contemporanea, indicano che l’arte è deceduta…come il cane fatto morire di fame legato da un artista contemporaneo molti anni fa…lasciate che i morti continuino ad esserlo. Chi mangia cibi sofisticati e bizzarri ha perduto il senso del gusto, ecco l’elettronica musicale contemporanea non ha più senso del gusto in questo…senso il loro palato è deceduto. Devono rianimarlo.

    1. Luckily for me, one of my best friends is an Italian teacher. Since Google Translate sucks, I asked for her help and she suggested the following reply: “E sti gran cazzi?”. Not sure what it means though.

    1. haha i was about to post just this 🙂 There are two kind of people in this comments section : those who don’t like this module, and those i’d like to meet in real life. Cheers!

  12. Imagine, the poor knob-twiddler, in the middle of the night, after a few bottles of whatever, desperately slaving at his eurorack. Nothing comes out of his hands, it’s just noise. If only there was a quick way out of this nightmare…

    This is a very punk and dare I say Situationist module, and a critique of the mindless consumerist mindset of SOME modular geeks, who will sell their kids and their kidney to fill the racks. So a very true, funny, real-life criticism.

  13. Can we look on the bright side??? Send some demo units to Ziv, Bo, Simon, Noir, Andrew Huang, Doctor Mix, and Jogging House, in addition to anyone doing reviews for Sonic State that’s not Nick or Gaz. Get them all out of my youtube feed for a month or 2.

    Also send one to Sam and see how he mods it.

  14. Finally I found the perfect module for my rendition of Cage’s 4’33. I think I am going to fill my whole eurorack with these so the silence is nice and fat.

  15. Using with a PSU that has short-circuit protection, you could actually use this in a performance and get weird effects (modules can behave funny during startup and shutting off). If they add gating control to this module, you could control it with another system that has it’s own power supply.

  16. I’d love to see the VCV version of this. I love that classic sound of flames shooting out of the RAM sockets on my motherboard, but it’s been nearly impossible to recreate it since they removed that feature from Finale.

  17. I think there’s a secret easter egg function inside it that DOESN’T fry your synth…. only revealed to those brave enough to flick the switch.

  18. I like it. It’s highly conceptual. It’s the eurorack equivalent of a suicide module. An electric cyanide capsule. I mean imagine the potency of knowing the flick of that switch could end it all. Art.

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