MM315 Balanced Modulator

Ring Modulator with patchbay and attenuators

The MM315 Balanced Modulator is a ring modulator with surprising clarity and precision that belies its "vintage" character, enabling it to do double duty as a high-quality VCA with handy utilities (patchbay and attenuators) as a bonus.

The MC1496 modulation chip from the late 1960s has passed into legend and is still popular today, however the original AR315 was about the only use of its more sophisticated, much better-performing, analogue computing grade sibling the MC1595L, which is now out of production. We have sourced new-old-stock examples of this chip for the MM315.

The result is an excellent ring modulator which has very low distortion and does not "lose tone" as amplification is increased, while retaining the precision of an IC-based circuit. Indeed, it can easily serve as a good quality conventional output VCA if paired with an envelope generator that outputs zero volts when idle.

The two outputs (MOD1 and MOD2) are identical and are independently connected to the output signal via 1k protection resistors. There is also an independent 4-way patchbay and two 100k passive linear attenuators which can be used anywhere in your modular system.

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