Future-Proof your Cocteau & YOCTO V2 enclosures!
Later this year, there will be available two additional modification kits from
Autonomik Circuits:
Remora and
Vactrol-8. Both kits will require additional holes on the back panel and/or front face and bottom of the enclosure, so
Kacper will be presenting options for those who want either of these forthcoming kits. Some people were bummed that they needed a new enclosure for Cocteau. Having taken that into consideration, these kits are being announced now, so that those interested will have an enclosure ready for these mods when they are available for purchase.
Remora (formerly “Drum Module Generator” [DMG]) is an expansion module with cartridge slot that installs in an expansion port on the back of the drum machine where you can plug in separately-sold analog drum voice circuits in the form of swappable Gameboy DMG cartridges. These cartridges are surface-mount versions of popular analog drum circuits (808, 909, 606, etc.).
Remora's list of features includes:
- Gameboy cartridge slot
- Volume level pot
- 4 pots for sculpting the sound (for example, 808 BD: Tone, Decay, Tune)
- Mono 3.5 mm jack for Audio Out
- internally connects to Trig Out, Accent and Audio Mix of drum machine
- Onboard options for 909 & 606 noise circuits and digital chip noise circuits (Delptronics, Electric Druid, etc.)
- Compatible with Cocteau, YOCTO, and NAVA
Currently, there are functioning prototypes of 9 different Remora drum cartridges, with more under development. They will ship as individual, ready-to-use cartridges and possibly as DIY kits (for those comfortable with SMD soldering).
Remora, which ships with its own panel, slides into the drum machine's back panel expansion port.
Situations when another drum voice might be useful:
- You're sequencing your NAVA and want to add in an 808 Rimshot
- You're laying down some YOCTO beats and need two BDs tuned apart with different decays
- (My favorite) You've tweaked your Cocteau CP to sound like a "snap", but still need a Handclap sound, so you insert a CP-8 cartridge to have both.
*** If you are interested in purchasing Remora later, please choose Kacper's enclosure option with the expansion port. The enclosure will ship with a blanking panel over the expansion port, which can be unscrewed to install Remora.
Vactrol-8 kit
The second kit adds 8 or 16 CV inputs in the form of vactrol circuits. These vactrol circuits are similar those found in various commercially available drum modules, where a CV signal received is output as a variable resistance, adding CV control over pots and resistors of the user’s choice. The
Vactrol-8 kit puts modular CV control into a tabletop drum machine format, i.e., Cocteau, YOCTO, or NAVA.
There are three parts to the kit:
1) Two Vactrol PCBs that mount on the floor the enclosure, 8 vactrol circuits per PCB.
2) CV Input jacks (3.5 mm, mono) on the back panel, connected to the Vactrol PCB
3) Front face Switch PCB with SPDT slide switches that connect or bypass the individual vactrol circuits. This Switch PCB connects to the Vactrol PCB via a shielded 16-conductor ribbon cable.
Selected pots (chosen by the user) are wired in series with individual vactrol circuits on the Vactrol PCB. In the case of Cocteau, the wires that connect the Cocteau PCB to the YOCTO main PCB need only passed through the Vactrol PCB via MTA connectors (i.e., no additional number of wires needed).
Changes needed in the enclosure for
Vactrol-8:
- 12 holes on the bottom of the enclosure to mount two Vactrol PCBs (6 holes per PCB)
- 32 holes on the bottom to access the trimmers on the Vactrol PCBs (the trimmers that set the offset and scale) (16 holes per PCB)
- 16 holes on the back panel for the CV Input jacks
- 16 holes on the front face of the enclosure for the slide switches (plus 7 mounting holes)
*** If you are interested in purchasing a Vactrol-8 kit later, please choose Kacper's enclosure option with the extra CV holes.
--Additional back panel holes--
There are additional back panel holes for:
- RS/CL-2 & MA-2 Audio Out (Cocteau only)
- Trig 3 Out (Cocteau only)
- Accent Out
- White Noise (WN) IN (input audio signal that replaces WN)
- HT & CH individual Audio Out (YOCTO V2 only)
- extra holes for jacks for user-defined mods
