{"id":425,"date":"2021-08-14T08:11:55","date_gmt":"2021-08-14T08:11:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nilamox.com\/mancave21\/?page_id=425"},"modified":"2024-12-06T09:26:35","modified_gmt":"2024-12-06T09:26:35","slug":"ass-station-2","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/nilamox.com\/mancave21\/ass-station-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Novation Ass Station 2 \ud83e\uddfb\ud83e\uddfb\ud83e\uddfb\ud83e\uddfb"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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In the photo, Mr. Chris Huggett RIP<\/a> who you can see was the creator of the Wasp<\/a>, Gnat, OSCar<\/a> and other such things. The brown tinge to the photo reinforces that these are vintage and therefore acceptable possessions for discerning dorks. But if you consider Mr Huggett as an artist (and after all if Tracy Enim is an artist then let\u2019s not hold too high a barrier here) then you would expect he developed his artistry over the years, become better at what he did.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He wrote the OS for the early white AKAI samplers and went on to create the BassStation, Nova, Supernova, Supernova 2<\/a> which if nothing else were more powerful \u2013 wasps became whales you might say. More recently he had something to do with the Ultranova and Mininova<\/a>, but there is no doubt that he took a soldering iron to the BassStation 2, look here is the colour photo. Built the damn thing. Surely you would think that\u2019s got to be the pinnacle of his craft.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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As is often the case, no one seems to care about equipment photographed in colour. They are discounted left right and center. Me, I count on discounts. Get a BS2 for about 1\/10th the price of an OSCar. Win.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Part of the problem is the name. It comes from Novation\u2019s origins in Roland penis envy, the BassStation 1 being a better BassLine. From the name you\u2019d think the BS2 did the one thing, but actually it would be the OSCar which had the emotional range of a spoiled cat*. I can\u2019t let that name pass and so at least my one is called the Ass Station.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It wouldn\u2019t be a Novation product without some kind of QC failure, in my case the filter knob is the same small size as all the others. Yes, straight from the factory, maybe they ran out of big knobs in China that week. I cared for about a minute, I might write to them get the proper one some day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

sensible review<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s very small. Sits on your lap. Not quite Microbrute, but petite. You will turn it on and get a nice analogue bass bumphy bumphy noise. SH-101 definitely. Get the arppegiator going, it\u2019s much more sophisticated than most, having numerous rhythm styles. You get bluh bluh bluh bluh, but also bluh be be bluh be, and even bluh    bluh    bluh    bebe. It can go up n down or follow the notes you play, and you will latch that and start to twiddle some Berlin School Lunch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Definitely much warmer than Roland, more in the territory of the MS2000<\/a> in being grumpy, particularly when you raise the distortion knob. The thing I was most keen to hear was the filter being modulated by the audio signal of Osc 2, because that\u2019s a very Kawai 100F<\/a> thing to do. So much is coming down the pipe (2 oscillators and a sub and a ring modulator) it took me quite some time to get the same kind of demented squealing \u2013 you have to use only the self resonation of the filter being harmed by OSC 2 at high frequencies, and slowly introduce signal \u2013 being analogue the mixage doesn\u2019t follow sense, being more like mixing a gin and tonic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pretty soon I was getting really odd sequences going which you could pass for some expensive modular Christmas tree. It brought joy. At one point I managed to get vowel sounds by assigning a very high frequency OSC 2 to mod the filter and moving the distortion knob. That was contrary to my understanding of synthesisers and is evidence that this is an analogue weird-shit device.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are an increasing number of features hidden in functions that are selected on the piano keys. You can\u2019t see their settings very clearly (another very OSCar thing) so it goes from being ‘hands on’ to ‘get manual out’ quickly. There\u2019s also a lot of switching between OSC 1 and 2 and the two ADSR settings. So what you are seeing on the sliders may not be the reality and you get fooled into tweaking the wrong thing at times. It\u2019s not really something I would be 100% confident in using live.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Also I am dead sure the little blue lights in the wheels will die. It\u2019s Novation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You want this if you want to make bleepy doodles, somewhat near to those of the MS2000<\/a>. As a bass synth, sure, it\u2019s fine, about par with SH anything. All in all a very my-first-80s-synthesiser feeling \u2013 SH-101, Novation making a thing that is better than the thing you remember. A good choice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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UPDATE <\/strong>Since I first wrote this review there’s been an outburst of updates for the Bass Station 2 that considerably change its sonic range and value. What was once a simple mono analogue has jumped to being an essential WTF noise box.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first update brought paraphonic mode, filter tracking, envelope retriggering, oscillator error and microtuning. These were all requests for the original machine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The most recent update brought a different patch to each key<\/em>, making the BS2 a bit like analogue drum machine – or whatever you desire. It’s a tribute to the original design that it keeps expanding.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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EXTRA UPDATE<\/strong> – all the knobs on my BassStation2 started to rot, break and fall off. I finally wrote to Novation and they sent new knobs, including the big one for the filter. Unfortunately the wheels rotted completely but I just pulled the plastic bits off and now they’re just the illuminated bit. That’s OK.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

* It\u2019s not that the OSCar was a bad synthesiser, although I sold mine very quickly back in 1985. But it only did two things really, sound all big n boomy, or if you used the additive synthesis feature that was its big selling point it sounded like a software organ for the Apple 2. That\u2019s not quite enough for a whole soundscape.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the photo, Mr. Chris Huggett RIP who you can see was the creator of the Wasp, Gnat, OSCar and other such things. The brown tinge to the photo reinforces that these are vintage and therefore acceptable possessions for discerning dorks. But if you consider Mr Huggett as an artist (and after all if Tracy […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"tags":[5],"class_list":["post-425","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry","tag-analogue"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nilamox.com\/mancave21\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/425","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nilamox.com\/mancave21\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nilamox.com\/mancave21\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nilamox.com\/mancave21\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nilamox.com\/mancave21\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=425"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nilamox.com\/mancave21\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/425\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2426,"href":"https:\/\/nilamox.com\/mancave21\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/425\/revisions\/2426"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nilamox.com\/mancave21\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=425"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nilamox.com\/mancave21\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=425"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}