Indeed what is a vactrol!Vitja wrote:What is Vactrol?
Simple two things:
1. A diode
2. A photocell
Both pointed at one another.
I just got three of them from Allied Electronics today.
Here is what they look like and they are cheap:
http://www.alliedelec.com/Search/Produc ... ESC=VTL5C3
Another name for them is a optoisolator because they can be used to isolate two circults.
They work like a relay. Switch on a simple circult to supply power to the diode and the LED lights up. Before this, the photocell is in darkness and therefore, it's resitance is high. Once the power is applied, the LED causes the resistance fo the photocell to drop to a very low resistance, almost an open circut.
So why is this musical? Here is the magic! Vactrols sing! They sing there little electronic hearts out.
You don't believe me listen:
You use them with what is called a low pass gate:
Plan B has them along with other modular companies:
http://www.ear-group.net/model_13.html
Secret - these little beasts create a envelope that when combined with filter produce pseudo natural sounds like plucked strings. I think this is one of the things that attracted Morton Subotnick to Buchla systems. I am not sure why Moog never used them. But you can buy them and you can plug them into a fooger (if you are handy with a soldering iron), 1/4 " plug, cable and a bit of folder will do it.
Combine it with a MIDI to gate (relay), and a low pass fooger and you have a vactrolfooger singing like the best of them.