Behringer Wasp Deluxe 🧻🧻🧻

What goes zzub zzub?

When speaking of ‘industrial music’ these days we tend to think of the American version – heavy metal with a sprinkling of samples and a lot of shouting. Although that’s been the successful format it’s not the original style at all – 70’s folk music of the English factory towns. Disillusioned ripostes to Kraftwerk. More forlorn, abrasive and based on musique concrete – the original weapons were tape recorders, modified instruments (violins, bass) and very simple, cheap electronics. Throbbing Gristle were the original industrial band – Chris Carter made a ‘Gristleizer’ out of foot pedals. SPK had at least one EMS-AKS (in the days when they were cheap). Severed Heads were perhaps in the second wave of this movement, using tape recorders, electro-harmonix pedals and cheap Japanese keyboards.

When we arrived in the UK for the first time I’d often see bands bring little yellow keyboards on stage, all tin and plastic and producing a harsh grinding noise. This was the 1978 Wasp, the first synthesiser designed by Chris Huggett – cheap, nasty and full of bite. These units were then 6-7 years old and sounded like every moment in that time had been hell. I skipped that and came home with his second instrument, the OSCar.

When Behringer announced their Wasp remake I was still a bit leery. But recently they massively discounted the Wasps to a few hundred Australian dollars, obviously clearing them out to make room for new things. 40 years later – time to finally own an ‘industrial’ synthesiser!

When it arrived all the knobs were set to zero and while some were easy to figure out, the general flow is very different to recent machines. Also confusing is that half the notes on my controller keys didn’t sound. This had to be set down an octave as the Wasp will not recognise any notes played outside its range (you then set the oscillators up or down octaves as needed).

Two oscillators and an external signal are mixed together in the OSCILLATORS, but then with noise coming from the CONTROL OSCILLATOR panel for some reason. My first attempt was bitter and twisted until I figured out the ‘repeat’ setting on the envelopes. This repeats each note based on the time taken up by the envelope, and when I first started this envelope was set to zero – thus the note was being re-triggered at a fixed audio rate, overwhelming the osc signal.

Once I’d figured that out things started to make sense. Mix the oscillators and other signals – send that through the filter which can be Low, High, Band or Peak. Adjust the envelopes and if you like, choose to have the amp and filter envelopes repeat. Not too tricky. There’s no cross modulation although the CONTROL OSCILLATOR (which we now call an LFO) can get up into the audio range. If you are determined to be ‘industrial’ you can set up the two repeats to be around the same rate as the LFO and it sounds rewardingly awful. A drone switch will keep the noise going endlessly so you can scratch away at that violin.

Disappointing that there’s not much physical patching compared to Behringer’s more recent toys. Two outs for the individual oscillators and main audio in/out. The manual says the latter two are joined by default but I didn’t find that – when running a cable the looped audio didn’t make too much difference. At this price you might open it up to see if this can be extended.

Some online writers have claimed that Huggett’s Bass Station 2 is an updated version of the Wasp. They are full of shit – sounds nothing like it. This is a cheap noisy fun little thing of its own, one step up from a Korg Volca. Try pay as little as possible and keep a tradition alive.

Postscript: the real thing available for only $3500.00 including the external keyboard. For a collector that’s not unreasonable, for music – why would you? Note that the real thing doesn’t have oscillator mix levels.