Modal Electronics Skulpt

New four-voice, sub-$300 digital synthesiser launches on Kickstarter

Modal Electronics have announced Skulpt, a new portable polyphonic synth that’s based on the voice architecture used in the company’s CRAFTsynth.

Skulpt offers four voices of polyphony, with eight oscillators per voice. These oscillators offer ‘smooth morphing waveforms’ with frequency modulation, pulse width modulation and ring modulation available. The synth comes with a multitude of modulation possibilities, focussed around an assignable matrix with eight slots and 37 destinations. Source-wise, there are three envelopes – routed to the Filter and Amp, and a separate Mod envelope – along with two LFOs, which can be pushed up to audio rate.

The filter is a resonant two-pole variety, modelled on a State Variable design, similar to the ‘morphing’ filters found in more high-end Modal gear. This means it can be continuously moved from low-pass mode through a band-pass setting and into a high-pass state. There’s also a sync-able master delay, along with a waveshaping distortion.

Control-wise, there’s a built-in sequencer and a 16-note keypad for note input. There’s also an onboard arpeggiator with control over timing divisions, direction, swing and octave range. Should you wish to plug in a more capable keyboard, there’s MIDI I/O and Thru, along with classcompliant MIDI over USB. Parameters can be tweaked using 13 front panel encoders.

If, on the other hand, you’d prefer to go down the software control route, you can do so using the MODALapp editor, which works across desktop and mobile platforms.

Skulpt is certainly an eye-catching proposition. Portable synths are always popular – this one will run for more than 12 hours on six AA batteries, so we’re told – but Modal thinks it has enough about it to warrant a place in your studio setup as well. A Kickstarter campaign is live now, with units available at less than $300. This is set to be the first in a new line of portable instruments from the company.