Boomstar SE88 Modular Filter
I finally have the sound of the legendary Yamaha CS-80 in my eurorack modular system. I put it off for a while but decided it was time to get the Boomstar SE88 filter. It reminds me of my original plans for a modular synthesizer. I thought it would be nice to be able to change the sound of the instrument by adding a new module rather than buying an entire new synthesizer. I felt that would save me a lot of money! Yeah…. riiiiight.
Well, half of the plan worked! Now I have filters to emulate the original Moog Modular filter, the Arp 2600, the Wasp, the Prophet 5, and the Korg MS-20. I also have a Monotron retrofitted to work with eurorack which gives me the actual Korg filter as well, and it sounds fantastic! Now that I have the SE88 I can also emulate the CS-80, and I think I’m running out of modules I want! Well, maybe 1 more.
Of course, I’d still love to get a CS-60 or CS-80 but those go for a lot of money so I don’t think it’ll happen anytime soon. Luckily, most of my music is recorded one line at a time so monophonic, rather than polyphonic synthesizers work just fine for me. And I think many of us would love to have the ability to recreate that classic Vangelis Blade Runner lead sound with our modular synths.
The one thing I have immediately discovered is that the CS-80 sawtooth wav in the Mutable Instruments Braids module is the perfect companion for this module. You really can hear the difference when you put that through this filter. The combination really does sound like that classic sax-like Vangelis lead! In fact, maybe I need a second Braids….hmmm!
This filter gives you the highpass filter before the lowpass just like the original although one gives you a couple of extra options. You can set the first filter to be Highpass or Band-reject and the second one is either Lowpass or Bandpass. All of the options are very smooth and rich sounding and I think the Highpass filter is the best one I’ve heard yet. With the resonance turned up high the Lowpass filter will give you lots of very prominent harmonics as you slowly sweep through the frequencies.
I think this will become one of my favorites very quickly and hopefully will be heard in many new songs to come!