Crumar Spirit 2023 edition - intro and sounds

[@verstaerker]

Great sounding synth! Thanks for the good demonstration

[@waveterm]

Excellent runthrough ! Thanks.

[@briankehew579]

It's Bob Moog, Jim Scott, and Tom Rhea who designed it together.

[@ohoganroad]

I had one of these back in the early eighties. My first ever synth and I loved it.

[@paologatto]

Great video and synth and bravi @CrumarTV

[@christianbachmann8206]

Mine is ready for shipping. Thx for sharing, sir! What an absolute beast.

[@bowieleijte-officialchanne8387]

Im currently obsessed with the crumar spirit, love this synth so much!

[@mickeythompson9537]

The Spirit is an interesting synth, it borrows some factors of the Sonic 6 (x/y mod and routings) and the dual filter design was later used by Bob Moog in the Voyager. I'd also suggest the Spirit's dual filter and three expression wheels influenced the Alesis Ion.

[@cores303]

great video, I waiting my spirit in january. so. can you play oscillator B like oscillator A. (like a normal oscillator ??).

[@robotussin_synths]

Yes certainly! Oscillator B is just the same as oscillator A. You can select the waveform, tune the pitch and then control the volume in the mixer section. Enjoy and let me know what you think when yours arrives!

[@cores303]

thanks my pal. waiting is a torture. @@robotussin_synths

[@unisonosc1617]

nervous about it arriving safe to the usa, how well are these packaged?

[@robotussin_synths]

Mine was fine. In a big box with polystyrene cheeks. Should be fine. Good luck!

[@BeachPresent]

You said it's not cheap. And how much does it cost? I wanted to buy it 20 years ago, but there was only one on eBay. And someone quickly bought it.

[@robotussin_synths]

They were €4,000 but only 100 new ones were made and they are all gone now. If you're intersted in buying one, look online but it would be around 4k or more I think... Private message me if you're in Europe and would like to offer a price for mine.

[@lrclazer1377]

Thanks for posting! I just got mine. One thing I've noticed is that the envelopes are pretty strange - for example, it's hard to tell if the sustain stage of the Loudness/Amp envelope is doing anything. With all sliders down, and the VCA set to Normal, the sound is exactly the same as when the sustain stage is all the way up. Is yours like this?

[@robotussin_synths]

Hi there, thanks for the comment. Mine does not work in the way you are describing. When I put the amp envelope all-sliders-down, I get a tiny pop or click. As I fade up the sustain it works like a volume control, sliding up the volume of the note I am holding. This is how it's meant to behave. If yours does not behave like this, can I ask some questions: are you holding down the note and the sustain makes no difference? What gate switches do you have clicked up, at the top? I tend to just have the keyboard gate switch set to on (up). Which sliders do you have up on the mixer in the bottom left? To test whether this is a problem, put them all down except for A and B in the "Filter ADSR Path" section. Finally, where is the filter envelope amount set? To test whether this is a problem, set it at 12 o'clock. If you have set it up as above and the sustain is still not doing anything, this sounds like a problem. Feel free to email me a video of what the synth is doing and I can give you an opinion. Email is [e-mail] Happy to help, or if you figured this out already, let me know! Thanks, Rbtzx

[@7thDanSound]

Thanks for a great video! Proud owner of one of the originals myself and yours seems to behave in many of the quirky ways that mine does :) It's lovely. A question thougj, my envelopes behave really weird, they are super fast up to about half of the slider travel and then, over a few millimeters, they to quite slow. So to find the sweet spot for bass you need to just tap lightly on the filter decay slider. Also, you say that in the mod section the "Shape X with Y" switch "syncs" the modulation, on mine it's actually that Y shapes the amplitude of X so you e.g. could fade in vibrato and such - is this not the case on yours? I guess that's sort of a sync though... Again, thanks for a great video! Very inspiring

[@robotussin_synths]

Thanks for the comment, and congratulations on owning an original. I am still learning how everything works, but lovely sounds do fall out of this synth. The envelopes are strange. One question from me: the X mod LFO does not go very slow and it's the only way to modulate the cutoff frequency of the upper, main filter. If I want to modulate the main filter very slowly, is there a way to do it? The Y modulator can run very slow but the cycles of the X are relatively fast. Just curious as this seems like a limitation on mine...

[@7thDanSound]

Thanks for your reply! Yes it's the same on mine, this machine does not allow for slow modulations. However, you can use Oscillator B in place of Mod X and I haven't checked how slow it will go... Also if you check the Mod X section you'll notice the sample and hold of Mod X can sample either random or Shaper Y! So if you sample Y you can get interesting cyclical things :) I run mine with CV/Gate from a Kenton, this way the Shaper Y can't be triggered externally. How does that work with the new MIDI stuff?

[@robotussin_synths]

@@7thDanSound The MIDI implementation is super basic. They just put a CV-to-MIDI converter in the back of the machine, so you can't select a MIDI channel, can't control any CC parameters, in fact when it's receiving MIDI signals you can't even play the keyboard on the Spirit. I think they wanted to add MIDI without changing anything inside, so they did this very simply...

[@7thDanSound]

Oh ok :( Well then I guess Shaper Y won't trigger over MIDI which is a shame. I've been speaking to a tech about modding mine so Shaper Y gets triggered externally. The second audio chain is awesome and really makes the synth unique.

[@RayyMusik]

I nice-to-have synth, but not a must like a Minimoog or derivative. Already sold out anyway. 🤷‍♂️