CRAFTsynth 2.0 is a monophonic wavetable synthesiser from Modal Electronics and shares the same form factor as their SKULPT synthesiser. Craft is considerably smaller and cheaper than SKULPT, but sounds dramatically different. There’s really nothing else that sounds like it anywhere near this price point.
It’s remarkably compact and light and can be powered by USB or batteries. There’s a built-in 8 note keyboard with 29 preset scales to choose from plus a custom scale which you can program yourself. The keyboard itself doesn’t support velocity or aftertouch however the synth engine does, so you can connect an external controller via MIDI and then velocity and aftertouch can be used as assignable modulation sources.
As with SKULPT there’s a free editor program available which works either stand alone or as a plugin. Whilst extremely useful, the entire synth engine can be operated entirely via the front panel without the software editor, hence the 2 shift buttons.
Craft is monophonic yet it has 8 oscillators and can produce 2 simultaneous waveforms. There are 8 banks of oscillator waveforms, each with 5 unique shapes which are freely morphable. This covers a range of categories from your standard virtual analogue shapes like saw and square, through to complex digital shapes derived from Modal’s high end 002 synth. Multiple Craft synths can be poly chained allowing up to four notes of polyphony.
There are 16 different oscillator cross modulation modes such as phase, amplitude and frequency modulation with Wave 2 modulating Wave 1. Wave 2 contains an additional 9th bank of basic waveforms optimized for various modulation applications.
The 8 oscillators can be detuned in unison using the spread function, or split into intervals including octaves. As well as the 3 envelopes and 2 audio rate LFOs, Craft has a distortion and delay effect, as well as a programmable arpeggiator.
Now available in Australia through the Modal Electronics dealers:
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I really want to buy one as I only have analogue equipment and it would be nice to have a small wavetable synth 4 melodic background sequences and pads but I'm worried about the wobbly knobs what is your opinion on the knobs. I've discovered there is a fix from a friend who used to work for Mackie New Zealand and they used to use electronics spacers or nylon shoulder washers inserted over the shaft and into the small hole to provide stabilization what do you think of this method do you think it's necessary. Any help would be appreciated thank you very much I've tried asking a lot of people but I haven't had a lot of replies so hopefully I'll hear from you. Just thought id say hi from New Zealand my name is Heath.
Hi Heath, we've only just got our hands on the CRAFTSynth2 and have not experienced any issues with the knobs at this stage.