FSS Portland

Portland

The Portland percussion synthesizer has been designed as a drum complement to the Brunswick synthesizer. Like the Brunswick, Portland has been designed with affordability and flexibility in mind, allowing for the ultimate performance from relatively basic electronics. Portland is also presented as a "sandbox" for percussion and drum synthesis, giving several different analogue sound generation and shaping elements in a patchable unit. The elements are normalled together on the patchbay, allowing for minimal patching to arrive at a kit of drum sounds, but this normalling can be overridden for more complex drum sound synthesis.

Portland features the following synthesis components:
-Bass Drum semi-linear resonator
-2x Twin-T resonators
-"Ring" generator, formed from 6 XOR'd oscillators
-Noise generator
-Dynamic hi-hat shaping circuit
-2x decay envelope generators
-2x discrete audio VCAs
-Four channel audio mixer with Baxandall tone circuit

A signal flow diagram of Portland can be seen here.

Whilst Portland can be powered from two PP3 9V batteries, the forthcoming FSS Battery Simulator will allow Portland to be powered from DC or Eurorack power supplies. Portland is also fully compatible with modular synthesizers and standalone sequencers. A Eurorack panel for Portland will be available soon.

Limited quantities of assembled units are available to purchase direct from FSS. Full kits of the Portland percussion synthesizer will be available from Thonk, May 2019.

Price: £330.00 (incl. 20% VAT) + shipping

Technical specifications:

Dimensions: 228 x 112 mm
Module power: 2x PP3 9V batteries (+12, -8mA current draw)

Patch bay I/O:

-Bass Drum sweep input (normalled to Decay 1 output)
-Bass Drum audio output
-"Ring" Generator mix input (normalled to Noise Generator output)
-"Ring" Generator audio output
-Twin-T Resonator 1 trigger input (normalled to TT2 trigger input)
-Twin-T Resonator 1 audio output
-Twin-T Resonator 2 trigger input (normalled to TT1 trigger input)
-Twin-T Resonator 2 audio output
-Snare Drum mix input (normalled to VCA2 audio output)
-Snare Drum audio output
-Closed Hat trigger input
-Open Hat trigger input
-Hi-Hat audio input (normalled to Ring Generator output)
-Hi-Hat audio output
-Hi-Hat envelope output
-Open Hat envelope output
-Decay 1 trigger input
-Decay 1 envelope output
-Decay 2 trigger input (normalled to TT1 trigger input)
-Decay 2 envelope output
-Noise Generator audio output
-VCA 1 audio input (normalled to Ring Generator output)
-VCA 1 control input (normalled to Decay 1 output)
-VCA 1 audio output
-VCA 2 audio input (normalled to Noise Generator output)
-VCA 2 control input (normalled to Decay 2 output)
-VCA 2 audio output
-Mixer audio input x4
-Mixer audio output