Modal Electronics has taken the original Skulpt portable synth back to the drawing board and returned with the Skulpt SE.
Offering the same compact form factor as its predecessor, this replaces the grey and black touch keypads with more traditional black and white ones. The front panel descriptors have been made more legible, and the build quality has been improved.
You get 127 brand-new patches and MPE support - something that was added to the original Skulpt via a firmware update. In fact, Modal claims that Skulpt SE is the most affordable MPE-compatible hardware synth currently on the market.
The sound architecture consists of two Wave groups per voice, each with four oscillators. This enables you to smoothly sweep between waveforms, and there’s additional oscillator modulation, too.
There are also state-variable 2-pole filters - these can morph from low-pass through to bandpass and high-pass - and three envelopes. The two LFOs (one global and one polyphonic) can be synced to internal or external tempo, and there are integrated delay and distortion effects.
Skulpt SE also comes with an integrated sequencer and arpeggiator, and you can polychain up to four of the devices (or the original Skulpt, for that matter) to create a 16-voice virtual analogue sound engine.
In-depth sound and editing and management can be done using the Modal app, which runs on all major computer and mobile platforms and is VST/AU compatible. The presets from the original Skulpt can be accessed from the Modal website.
Skulpt SE will be available from the middle of May priced at $200/£170/€200. Find out more on the Modal Electronics website.
