East Beast - fully analog East Coast style semi-modular synthesizer

MSRP $349.99 - Estimated street price $249.99

What’s the first thing you think of when you hear the word “synthesizer”? Close your eyes and think about it. Ok, enough you’re drifting, probably thinking about pineapples. 

Anyway, for a lot of people, the word synthesizer envokes visions of big filter cutoff knobs, envelope generators, and importantly, big fat-sounding voltage-controlled oscillators. These are the hallmarks of East Coast style synthesis.  

East Beast is a fresh take on these old-school concepts with a few beastly twists thrown in here and there. 

Oh and by the way, we almost forgot to mention, if you are into the whole eurorack thing, you can pop East Beast out of its included enclosure and it transforms right into a 40HP eurorack module. We should’ve called it Optimus Beast!

East Beast’s oscillator, designed in partnership with the too serious for words people from Pittsburgh Modular Synthesizers, is a part of their 5th generation of analog oscillators stemming from a super-serious 10 years of continued research into analog oscillator development. 

Its circuitry is not a clone or based on any outside designs. It is made with 100% modern components. This keeps it very stable, and giving it a super rich, and unique sound. Definitely not junk.

PGH Filter? What in the flying banana pancake monster is that?

Our uncomfortably serious friends (if you can call them that) at Pittsbugh Modular Synthesizers are just as serious about filters as they are about oscillators. Frankly, it’s a bit obnoxious (like we should talk). Anyway, this is a really really really good filter…. More on that to follow.

Most of the filters you are used to hearing are transistor ladder filters, or copies of transistor ladder filters. This is not one of those. The whole goal in making this filter was to create a creamy smooth filter with no dead spots, a very common phenomenon in all filters, but check it out. No dead spots. From nasally to biting and elsewhere, it’s all one large sweet spot.  

See spot sweep? Good spot, sweet spot! Ok, this is just getting weird…. moving on….

East Beast’s filter is a multi-mode filter, meaning it can be used as a low pass filter, high pass filter, bandpass filter, or a combination of the three for an even wider sonic palate.

Tons of filtery fun ffs.

to further sculpt the sounds we’ve included an envelope generator & LFO. The custom envelope circuit creates a snappy, percussive attack for expressive performance. The dual range LFO opens up a wide range of LFO and audio rate modulation possibilities. 

Get wobbly & weird, or not. No judgment from us here, we promise.

Semi-modular means that the East Beast will work without any patch cables or anything. But what fun is that? Who doesn’t want to have their own personal spaghetti mess of cables sticking out of their synthesizer to get wacky with? At the very least it makes you look super sophisticated to anyone observing. Anyway, East Beast has basically 9 different patchable modules (Oscillator, filter, envelope, VCA, LFO, multi-mod tool, sequencer, MIDI to CV converter, and button keyboard) with a whopping 18 Eurorack compatible patch points to plug into itself and your other gear. All for your patching pleasure.

MIDI too!

We’ve said it before, we love MIDI… It makes us feel warm and snuggly on the coldest of days. We lay in bed at night thinking about connecting everything to a giant MIDI interface that responds to brainwaves. Yeah, we know it’s messed up. But what’s not messed up is East Beast’s MIDI. It has MIDI in and a fancy MIDI thru so you can chain multiple MIDI monstrosities together. 

Maybe you don’t share our weird MIDI fetish, but at the least, you can enjoy plugging a MIDI controller into East Beast and rocking out and/or sequencing like mad. Again, no judgment.

Performance non-junk-stuff

But wait, there’s more! East Beast includes quite a few additional performance features. Why not get extra beast-like by getting serious like our friends at Pittsburgh Modular Synthesizers (they buy us lunch each time we include their full name on our website) and dive in with its built-in tap tempo clock, arpeggiator, and sequencer. There’s a lot of opportunities to inject in some randomness too. Pizza! Was that random? We think not. 

Some Really Boring Facts About 

East Beast

East coast style subtractive monophonic synthesizer

Controllable via MIDI, CV, and integrated button keyboard

Fully patchable - use East Beast’s components as separate modules with external devices or reroute its internal patching. It’s like having 9 individual modules (Oscillator, filter, envelope, VCA, LFO, multi-mod tool, sequencer, MIDI to CV converter, and button keyboard). 

32 step sequencer with up to 13 presets

Generative sequencing mode

Clock-synced arpeggiator

Step sequencer can be manipulated & transposed via MIDI and the integrated button keyboard

Pittsburgh Modular Synthesizer developed 100% analog oscillator 

Oscillator waveforms - sine, triangle, saw, square, and pitched noise - Waveforms can be combined

Oscillator includes pulse-width modulation (PWM) and frequency modulation (FM)

Variable state, multi-mode PGH “No-Dead-Spots” filter (lowpass, bandpass, highpass, modes can be combined)

Analog envelope generator

Integrated VCA

Dual-range analog LFO with triangle wave output

Digital multi-mod tool - modulation control via CV, random generator, and extra LFO and envelope generator

Internal clock with tap tempo and can be clocked via an external source.

Built-in clock divider 

Can be used standalone in its included case or removed and used as a eurorack format module

Specifications for when used as a eurorack module

Width when used as a module = 40hp

Depth when used as a module = 25mm

213mA power draw when running +12V rail

151mA power draw when running -12V

Input voltage range of oscillator = 0-10V

Included in the box - 1x East Beast, 1x East Beast wall-wart power supply, 5x Amazing Nazca Noodles Patch Cables, 2x 3.5mm to 5 pin MIDI Din pigtails, and love (love’s presence likely, but not guaranteed)

https://www.cre8audio.com/eastbeast