Love the Usta and what it can do.
A beautifully built device and lit encoders instead of potentiometers is the way to go with shared controls.
But those slippery pointy knobs are always so hard to use.
Form over function.
Recommendations on auto-generating synth boxes.
Some 100 series modules, driven by Pam's Pro Workout, in a Nifty Case, makes an interesting auto-noodle box.
It's nothing exotic, but covers the basics, and gives lots of possibilities for the money. Portable, powered,
plus the Nifty Case gets you get two channels of MIDI in. 
Smaller, maybe cheaper, but a bit fussier, would be a Pam's Pro Workout, a pair of 2hp Plucks, two 2hp Bells,
into a Doepfer 135-2 4 channel VCA mixer. An optional Disting mk4 could add additional echo fun that
works so well with auto-generation noodles. Substituting the 135-2 with a 100 series 121 dual VCF also works well
for mixing, sound shaping, and adding color. Pluck and Bell are surprisingly musical, sort of polyphonic,
and don't sound generically beep-ey. (and a pain to tune with those cramped knobs, but worth it)
https://noodlehut.bandcamp.com/track/cornishe-excerpt
I like using Pam's because using things like Maths to auto generate quickly gets boringly random for me
even if I tame it with more modules. Pam's is not a sequencer, but can give you complex euclidian beats
with quantized notes, along with some save and restore. And a nice yellow button for start and stop.
Affordable honorable mentions for the mults and offsets you'll find you will want:
Frap Tools 333 Sum and Distribution, and the Rides In The Storm QAM Quad Active multiple, are terrific and accurate.
If you're just starting out, Nazca Noodles are the only cables that consistantly work well for me,
other than those little yellow Doepfer wires, which I love to use wherever I can.
The longer Doepfer wires, and most others I've tried, are too stiff, or too thick, and just get in the way.
Stay away from those cables with LEDs in them. They seem like a good idea, but they'll mess you up every time.
Or you could just get a Behringer 2600 and go from there. Many have. ;)
Get the gray one if you do, the bright xmas lights on the brown/orange one quickly wear out their welcome.
The rossum-electro site hasn't been updated in around two years. After the $4,000(!) drum machine was announced,
everything went quiet. I think that the Locutus midi i/o for Assimil8tor was the last module. There was talk of black
panel versions of a few modules, but they are rare. Is Rossum too busy with his Sound Semiconductor business?
I've got 4 devices from them, Mob of Emus, Panharmonium, Assimil8tor, and Locutus and they sound great.
I hope they stick around a while more. They have the best documentation in modular.
Frap Tools Usta is great, shame it can only sequence in the forward direction,
but you won't find more beautiful, clean, and well-built hardware anywhere.
Xor's NerdSeq can do nearly anything, but the opaque documentation restricts it's utility somewhat.
Not really a traditional sequencer, the SIG Stochastic Inspiration Generator provides tons of fun.
NerdSeq. Modular, midi in/out(w/a 2hp expander), and some limited FM out all in one.
Can be tough to learn, but deep as you will ever need to build auto noodle patches.
The Swiss army knife of sequencers.
Here's a unique and terrible idea.
Drop the A-111-6 voice for an A-182-1 switch mult, and two 2hp pluck modules.
Yes, they are fussy to tune and a pain to rack straight, but often worth it.
You would get the stereo you're after plus a handful of polyphony.
The plucks will be fun with Maths, pair nice with Rings, and Clouds really likes them.
For what they are, they can sound wonderful.
You could really use that mult too.
And the Disting UI always frustrates me.
.
I'd put Maths in the lower left corner, before the percussion voices,
and put the quantizer and Circles to the left of the oscillators and envelope generators.
Avoid having wires draped everywhere. I love using those little yellow Doepfer wires.
The Wasp and the 106-5 SEM sound different, but kind of the same.
Substituting an A-101-6 Opto-FET Filter would provide more colors.
You are going to need more multiples.
If you had to sacrifice something for a 4HP Rides in the Storm QAM, what would it be?
Mounting a module from 2hp on the end of a row is asking for trouble.
Always a wonky fit and really difficult to get your fingers in there to tune it.
That voice is already covered, I'd drop it, and with the spare space already,
there's your 4hp for a QAM.
Circles (and techno!!) wants a clock. I know it's costly, but I'd drop the A-136 waveshaper,
and put a Pam's Pro Workout in the far left someplace. Maybe near a mult(!).
The A-136 doesn't give back much for the space it takes up anyway.
Pam's can do a lot of the things the noise generator does too, plus 7 other outs,
in the same space. It could also help with the lack of LFOs here.
--
I've settled on grouping by voice sets, not by having a row of oscillators, a bank of envelopes...
I did that at first, but now my clocks are grouped together up in the left corner, and audio/midi io in the lower left.
But I try to have modules in the middle near each other that I can link with
those little yellow doepfer wires as reasonable "defaults".
I also need less wires using Doepfer's CV and trigger bus lines in three of the groupings.
I sort of see it as: here's my bass and percussion sections, this group does keys, this row is guitar/lead,
and this is the mix to output. I can always cross patch to oblivion, but I don't have to every time I sit down to record.
Oh, and the Doepfer A-180-9 Multicore works great for interconnecting boxes.
My eyes are messed up with strabismus so I get lost in the weeds when wires are draped everywhere.
Not a kid now I guess, but I don't like wire balls anymore like I used to.
I believe neither did Alan R. Perlman's designs, compared to Moog and Buchla.
(latest build plan here)
A pretty sounding and low-hp module is the 2hp pluck.
It's 4 note polyphonic, has an interesting range of tones, and leaves you lots of rack room.
They are always a pain to tune because of the fiddly knobs and 2hp stuff is kinda cheap because they're cheap.
More than three 2hp modules in a rack is rarely worth suffering with their fit and control.
But... feeding it into mavis' external in can make for some astonishingly beautiful arpeggios.
Two plucks together is also nice. For tonal variety, add a 2hp bell.
The 3 together have provided me some "wow" moments where you have to just stop, listen, and smile.
cornishe_excerpt This is Pamela's Pro Workout -> A-156 QNT ->PluckPluckBell + Mavis into a Monsoon to stereo out.
Add a Doepfer A-138 narrow mixer to corral them, or you could add a Doepfer A-138s mini stereo mixer.
You'll also need a mult of some sort. The Doepfer A-182-1 stitchable mult
works great for this, adds 6hp more, and so now with pluck/pluck/bell/mixer/mult, we're still only
at 16 hp added and you've got lots of added fun.
I only wish that someone would make a unified PluckPluckBell with less twitchy tuning.
The video interface is intended for displaying the interface on an hdmi monitor, and it does that really well.
The video output is clean and records well. I wish that more/every manufacturer would provide that functionallity.
The video-art mode is low-res, unsupported, unfinished, and mostly undocumented (as of firmware v2.0).
I think Xor just thought it was an interesting hack, and kept what he had in the release, but it's sort of borked.
I got it to do some "things" but I was dissapointed I couldn't do basic drawing with it (draw a pixel/line at XY with this color).
It has a some potential, but also is limited by what the embedded video controller hardware is capable of.
Graphics mode also eats up one of the precious few tracks when using it for visuals.
Video synthesis it ain't, so don't buy it for that, but some audiences might enjoy seeing the tracker interface.
On Nerdseq, first get some patience because it's a bear to get a handle on 80% of the things it can do.
The company is just one (occasionally cranky) engineer, and the documentation is... challenging.
Instead of getting more modules to feed, I'd recommend getting a Doepfer A-185-2 Precision CV Adder.
It makes combining and tuning CVs from Nerdseq a lot easier than doing it in the Seq's interface.
Much fun to be had there adding CVs together.
NS does a lot with midi too, and I liked the price and footprint of Xor's 2hp midi in/out.
You get lot of utility for the 2hp of space it takes. I put it on a longer ribbon cable for ease of placement and it works great.
The Video/Keyboard works well if you think you need that, but it causes a bit of a ribbon cable rat's nest.
I have a CV-16 Expander, but it's very much a seperate device as far as programming it.
The high effort/reward ratio kept me from using it much and it's back on the shelf.
In all, NerdSeq is well made, reliable and if you need to spit out series of notes that you set up ahead of time,
it's a great choice, especially if you enjoy a tracker paradigm interface.
I just got a Frap Tools Usta today (so beautifully made) and I'm expecting that it and the NS will get along wonderfully.
