Pittsburgh Modular Analog Replicator

Cleaner, dirtier, brighter, darker, and more versatile than any other analog BBD delay line effects unit available. The Analog Replicator is the astounding result of over a year of ambitious design and engineering.

A New Beginning

The Analog Replicator was redesigned from scratch to be the finest analog delay available with a sound and feature set focused around the modular synthesizer.

Our original Analog Delay module grew out of the circuitry of a guitar pedal. The new Analog Replicator module does not share the same stompbox lineage. Michael Johnsen, Pittsburgh Modular's analog engineer, created a modern BBD core fed by a unique clock source and proprietary signal processing circuits. The result is a flexible, more musical, eurorack delay module.

How It Works

At the heart of the Analog Replicator is a pair of 4,096 stage BBD chips. The name BBD stands for [B]ucket [B]rigade [D]evice in reference to a line of people passing buckets of water to quickly extinguish a fire. Each stage of a BBD chip contains a single capacitor. Pairing two chips together creates a chain of 8,192 capacitors. Like the water buckets, an audio signal is passed from capacitor to capacitor within the BBD chips once every clock step. A slower clock produces a longer delay and a faster clock produces a shorter delay.

Multi-Mode Delay

The controls of the Analog Replicator can be used to produce a wide range of delay effects. The STAGES switch flips between 4,096 and 8,192 BBD stages. 4,096 uses a single BBD chip and 8,192 uses two. Using both BBD chips doubles the available delay time, perfect for echos and longer delays. Using a single BBD is useful for reverb and chorus effects. The SHORT/LONG switch drastically adjusts the delay range. Using a single BBD, the SHORT range varies between 10ms and 175ms and the long range varies between 10ms and 1300ms. The SHORT mode produces bright, clean analog repeats. LONG mode is dark and grimy. Mud and clock noise (whine) begin to leak in and eventually take over as the Analog Replicator reaches the longest available delay time.

Chorus and Reverb

The design of the Analog Replicator allows it to mimic Chrous and Reverb effects. Setting the switches to 4,096 and SHORT, adjusting the TIME control to create shorter delays, and adding a small to medium amount of FEEDBACK, the Analog Replicator generates an analog reverb effect. Add modulation using the TIME CV IN to take advantage of a range of chrous like effects.

Delay Ranges

4,096 and SHORT Selected: 10ms to 175ms 8,192 and SHORT Selected: 20ms to 350ms

4,096 and LONG Selected: 10ms to 1300ms (1.3 seconds) 8,192 and LONG Selected: 20ms to 2600ms (2.6 seconds)

Analog Replicator Controls:

• Clock Controls: TIME Knob - Adjust the delay time.
• TIME CV IN Knob - CV attenuverter used to attenuate and/or invert the incoming TIME CV signal.
• 4,096 / 8,192 Switch - Select between 1 and 2 BBD chips. 8,192 doubles the amount of available delay range.
• SHORT / LONG Switch - Select between SHORT and LONG delay ranges. Short range is bright and clean, long range is dark and dirty.
• FEEDBACK Knob - Sets the number of repeats generated from the delay signal.
• INVERT POLARITY Switch - In the up position, the switch inverts the Feedback polarity. This setting has an interesting effect with shorter delay times.
• FEEDBACK CV IN Knob - CV attenuverter used to attenuate and/or invert the incoming FEEDBACK CV signal.
• BYPASS Switch - Enable or disable the analog delay effect.
• SPILLOVER Switch - Enable or disable the analog delay effect. Feedback is allowed to trail off.
• INPUT DRIVE Knob - Audio signal input level contol.
• MIX CV IN Knob - CV attenuverter used to attenuate and/or invert the incoming MIX CV signal.
• OUTPUT MIX Knob - Sets the signal mix sent to the MIX OUT jack.
• INPUT JACK - Audio signal input.
• TIME CV Input Jack - CV input used to modulate TIME (length of delay time).
• FEEDBACK (FBK) CV Input Jack - CV input used to modulate FEEDBACK amount.
• MIX CV Input Jack - CV input used to modulate the OUTPUT MIX.
• DELAY OUT Jack - Delayed signal only output.
• MIX OUT Jack - Mix of dry and delayed signal output.

Size: 16hp
Module depth: 35mm
Power Usage: 45mA