Rubicon
2
Manual
Panel Overview
Rubicon
2
is a deep and flexible analog oscillator, with numerous controls and jacks working in
tandem to alter the pitch, waveform and harmonic spectrum in many unique ways. To
understand all its features and how they affect the sound, it might be easiest to divide the
various controls into sub-sections, and discuss them accordingly.
As you can see from the previous illustration, we have subdivided Rubicon
2
’s front panel into
nine different sections, which are:
1. Pitch Controls
- Included in these controls are a VCO/LFO switch for switching between
audio and LFO rates; an Octave Select switch; a PITCH knob (for fine tuning); an
OFFSET trimpot (for adjusting the oscillator’s base frequency), and a pair of waveform
polarity LEDs.
2. Wave Type Switches
- These three switches modify waveforms in one way or another.
The SINE TYPE switch on the left changes the shape and octave of the sine wave; the
SUB switch in the middle selects whether the sub oscillator operates one or two octaves
below the main VCO; and the PULSE TYPE switch on the right changes the trigger point
and octave of both the pulse and tri-state pulse waves.
3. FM Index Controls
- This knob and its corresponding attenuator alter the FM INDEX (i.e
the depth of Frequency Modulation) for the TZFM input.
4. Symmetry Controls
- These controls set the direction and magnitude of the waveform
through the linear FM circuit.
5. Misc Controls
- This section offers more timbral manipulation in the form of two
additional circuits: one for exponential FM and another for oscillator sync.
6. Pulse Width Modulation Controls
- This knob and its corresponding attenuverter alter
the width of any pulse waves generated by the Rubicon
2
.
7. Warp Controls
- Controls the amount and direction by which the sub oscillator (or any
other signal plugged into the
X
IN
jack) is warped by the tri-state pulse. An additional
SQUISH
circuit limits and folds the output waveform — the sonic characteristics of which
are set with a rear-panel trimpot.
8. Input Jacks
- This row of input jacks is for connecting audio sources and/or control
voltages into the Rubicon
2
.
9. Output Jacks
- This row of output jacks allows you to access all the various waveform
types generated by the Rubicon
2
.
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