PECS: Free string machine instrument by Full Bucket Music - Nov 16, 2022

Full Bucket Music has introduced a new software instrument based on KORG’s classic PE-2000 Poly-Ensemble S string machine from 1976: PECS.

The PE-2000 Poly-Ensemble S falls into the category of classic string machines and was released in 1976 along with its brother, the PE-1000 (which is more focused on percussive sounds).

The big difference to its competitor stringers from Eminent, ELKA, Logan etc. is that it does not use a BBD1-based delay unit to produce the essential Ensemble effect but implements three independent oscillator banks, each one equipped with its own tuning control and Vibrato generator.

These oscillators are based on the common “Top Octave Synthesizer” (TOS) and “Octave Divider” schema which was the fundamental design pattern of almost all electronic organs (and string machines) of that era.

PECS features

• Humble recreation of 8 original presets.
• Tweakable instrument parameters.
• Vintage Vibe.
• Resizable user interface (not “N” version.).
• MIDI Learn – all parameters can be controlled by MIDI CC.
• Plug-in supports Windows and macOS (32-bit and 64-bit).

PECS is free to download in VST/VST3, AU and CLAP plugin formats for Windows and macOS.

More information: Full Bucket Music

 

Full Bucket Music is one of the best free vsti developer actually. Very "specialized" but very good synths.

 

Bjorn is by far my favorite freeware developer, for a very long time. That doesn't prevent me from loving wonderful things some others do (Vital, Surge XT, Odin 2, VK1 Viking, Dexed, OB-Xd, PG-8X, Lord Of The Springs, Zebralette/Podolski/TripleCheese/TyrellN6, etc.) but the totality of Bjorn's plugins are really a completely different case as this guy is able to make a great quantity of synths (both emulations and pure creations), even complex ones, while keeping the bar very high in terms of quality. Whatever style of modern music you want to make you can almost do it all with his synths. To this day I think the only thing I'm missing a little bit in his catalog is a drum kit. Its emulation of the Korg Minipops is beautiful but obviously it can't be used in very diverse styles. I wait for him to release a little wonder like the Korg KR-55 from 1979 or the Korg KPR-77 from 1982 or the Korg DDD-1 from 1986 or the Korg DRM-1 from 1987 (but the last two were sample-based), all being able to be used in prog-rock, krautrock, cosmic-rock, ambient, new age, punk, new wave, techno, song... With an emulation of one of these four mythical Korg drum machines it would be a dream come true.

Bjorn is really a god of the freeware synths.

 

Last edited: Nov 17, 2022

The Demo sounds great

 

And with a nod and a wink to JMJ and his millions of fans.