Launched at Superbooth earlier this year, we speculated that Erica Synths’ Perkons HD-01 could be “this year’s must-have drum machine”.
However, it seems that we were wrong - not because the Perkons is lacking in quality (we can’t yet comment on that), but because you still can’t buy it.
The plan was to release Perkons before the end of 2021, but Erica Synths has now confirmed that it won’t be hitting this deadline, saying that its plans were affected by “unforeseen circumstances from suppliers”.
The company explains that it ordered microcontrollers for Perkons on the understanding that they’d be delivered in September 2021, but these now won’t be available until late 2022. A pretty severe delay, then.
In the meantime, Erica Synths is reworking the PCB to function with other parts that are available sooner.
The good news is that the extra development time has also enabled the company to improve Perkons’ user interface in the hope that this will make it an even better product.
Perkons – named after an ancient Baltic god of thunder – is a four-voice drum machine combining digital sound generation with analogue filters and effects.
Each of the instrument’s four voices features a digital oscillator, switchable between three modes and shaped by a pair of parameter controls. Sounds then pass through an analogue filter; this is switchable between low-, high- and band-pass modes, and equipped with a drive control for added heft.
Beyond this, Perkons features an analogue bucket brigade delay and optical compressor. There’s also a global LFO with morphable waveshapes, which can be routed to any of the voices’ eight sound-shaping parameters, plus a sequencer.
Pre-orders for Perkons are set to open in early 2022, presumably at the previously announced price of $1,999/€1,650. Find out more on the Erica Synths website.
