“Does Life affect Death or Burial, or both?” While this could be a perfectly useful philosophical rumination to jumpstart wine-drenched post-dinner conversations, it actually is a frequent customer question for us. People want to why the Baron Samedi fuzz module sounds so insane and what the knobs do. Fortunately for them, we have no clue, and they have all sorts of amazing sonic accidents.
At Animal Factory, we makes an almost comical effort to steer clear from normalcy. Possibly as a result of this, one of the most common questions that we seem to get is “What are the differences between Godeater, Pit Viper and Baron Samedi”? For that reason, here's a quick guide that will go a little deeper into the nature of each module. Note that we're not including Orobas here - that module will get it's own video soon.
Flavours of Fuzziness
Here’s a quick video that shows the distortion timbres and characteristics using just sine waves in different registers, as well as chords from the Xaoc Devices Odessa.
Diving Deeper
Initially, the Pit Viper and Baron Samedi modules were straightforward implementations of our guitar pedals with level conversion and some CV functions added to them. Ben DivKid’s excellent video from Future Music really highlights the tonal differences between the two modules.
Being the fourth module we released, the Godeater was designed a little differently. Instead of implementing the Godeater pedal circuit 1:1, we came up with ways to retain the core distortion sound while building it for more CV functionality. This paid off, with the Godeater becoming probably our most popular Eurorack module along with the Coma Reactor Delay.
Here's an excellent comparison video from Son Wu music that highlights the Godeater and Baron with various sources – including vocal distortion!
During the Coronavirus pandemic, we redesigned the Pit Viper and Baron Samedi modules from the ground up. Check out John Schussler’s awesome video for the version 2 modules going head-to-head. Do check out his channel for tons of demo videos too.
In our own words...
As you can hear, the three modules couldn’t be more different. Here's a little comparison table that summarises how we feel about them, what they're great for and what they suck at.
|
|
Baron Samedi |
Pit Viper |
Godeater |
|
Distortion Type |
Fuzz |
Overdrive |
Bass Distortion |
|
Moodwords |
Weird, chewy, velcro, gated, bass-rich, chaotic, repeatable |
Articulate, clear, brash, midrange-rich, amp-like
|
Thick, warm, heavy, clear, doom, drone, oompf
|
|
Drums |
Insane. Can get very gated or add subharmonics, fake-basslines etc. |
Great for transient shaping |
No kick drum should be without it |
|
Polyphony/Chords |
Not a good choice. Will likely scramble everything |
Excellent |
Very good, if used with HPF |
|
Self Oscillation |
Yes, CV controlled |
No |
No |
|
Weirdness |
10/10 |
4/10 |
0/10 |
|
Additional Features |
CV-controlled feedback loop for wild oscillations |
State-Variable Filter/EQ with Self-FM for added harshness and nastiness |
CV-controlled crossfading between Wet/Dry. Clean channel works as simple VCA |
|
Brutality |
10/10 |
7/10 |
9/10 |
|
Final Stage Saturation |
Not the best choice, unless you’re looking for absolute mayhem |
Excellent |
Excellent (with some tonal adjustments), particularly with CV |
In future blogs and videos, I'll go deeper into the history of the pedals and some advanced module functions. Till then, much fuzzlove from Mumbai.
- Aditya