S-CAT BASS-SYNTH REVIEW: OLLY BERRY (SYSTEM REJECTS)
Techno producer and co-owner of System Rejects record label, Olly Berry, gives us his take on his Bass-Synth. You can listen to a track made using the Bass-Synth in the accompanying soundcloud demo.
“I’ve been using the Bass Synth from Space-Cat Audio Technologies for the last couple of months and it has definitely won a place in my heart and in my studio.
The unit is built on the Curtis CEM3340 oscillator chip which has been at the heart of some amazing synths historically; the Jupiter-6, SH-101, Memorymoog, OB-Xa, Prophet-5 Rev.3 and many more have used this chip, so it has a great pedigree. The guys at S-Cat have really managed to find the low end sweet spot with this chip and the Bass Synth does exactly what it says on the tin, extremely well.
Bass. Deep, throbbing bass. With 3 waveforms to choose from/mix, there’s a decent variety of sounds available so warm, smooth sounds are easily dialled in, as are harsher, more aggressive timbres. The filter is awesome, closing all the way down to silence and opening up with just the right amount of resonance for bassline usage, and a decent amount of grit at the top end.
The octave switch is a good addition, allowing the unit to be used for more up front “lead” basslines in the higher registers and dropping right down to earth shaking sub bass at the bottom end. Tuning seems very stable.
The envelope is basic, but perfectly suited to a bass synth and the trigger button is a nice touch for auditioning sounds quickly.
What’s really interesting (to me at least) is the small patch bay, allowing voltage control of PWM for the square wave, FM, AM and sync. It’s also possible to control the filter with CV via the jack on the front of the unit. It took a little trial and error to work out the best way to use these as the required voltages are not quite what I’m used to using with my Eurorack system, but using some attenuverters I’ve managed to get some great results. In particular the AM can get pretty wild, probably taking it beyond most people’s definition of “bass” with some really gritty overtones.
Overall, I’m really loving this synthesizer. It’s become my go to for bass in almost every situation and I’ve already used it on several recordings/releases and will continue to do so.”
– Olly Berry (OB1, System Rejects).