The Roman god of fire, volcanos, and metalworking, Vulcan was the son of Jupiter and Juno, husband to Venus, and grew up underwater with sea mammals as friends. He was also an avid craftsman, and rumor has it that he made Jupiter's lightning bolts, weapons, and jewelry of all types. While that short, abbreviated list of biography and skills may seem incongruent, if not impressive, perhaps a certain maelstrom surrounding Vulcan's life would have calmed slightly, had he put his creative energies—and his trusty hammer—towards more constructive pursuits like making musical instruments instead of weapons (and also, if his father hadn't thrown him into a volcano). Make love, not war, remember? Well, where Vulcan left off in his artistic pursuits, the duo of Joe Vella and Eric Kessel, better known as Electro Faustus, have picked up, granted, quite a bit later. With their EF118 Vulcan's Hammer, Electro Faustus has crafted an accelerator-controlled oscillator, and has brought swinging, bashing, crushing and potentially tenderizing out of Mount Etna and into the peripheries of your modular/synth/musical realm, whether it was their intention or not for the bashing part.
The Hammer itself, while made primarily of off-the-shelf parts found at both electronic supply and well-stocked hardware stores, is surprisingly robust, not that you'd want to take it to battle or anything. It is well-proportioned and replete with good balance and feels quite good in the hand when one wields it. And wield it, you must. With only an On/Off switch, a ¼" mono output, and a volume control, there isn't much myth or mystery to this Hammer—no Wikipedia page for it yet—so it's easy to jump right in and get swinging. Or bashing.
As a sound source, EF118 emits only a simple, glitchy square wave. The Hammer is quantized—chromatically, I think, though it's hard to get it to sit still long enough to verify it. Waving the Hammer to and fro on a 180º axis results in stepped pitch changes (low to high or vice versa, depending on the orientation of the Hammer), spanning nearly four octaves, from approximately 100Hz to 2000Hz. In its raw form, the Hammer feels pretty limited, and waving it back and forth a few times is mildly enchanting with its brute glitchiness. Adding a slew of effects—reverb, delay, etc.—brings with it some power, and surprisingly, some beauty as well. The movement of the oscillator by swinging the Hammer around is simple, but can be resplendent. Whether moving slightly and slowly, or hammering away in rapid succession, some of the movements created unique sounds where the use for sound design was pretty evident. But this application, for me, was not where lightning strikes.
Using the Hammer to FM another VCO with its square wave, was quite interesting. The movements of the Hammer, again, created sounds that you can't easily get anywhere else. When I tried to replicate it with merely a square wave VCO, I really wasn't able to—glitchy quantization or not—the Hammer movement is that unique…and touchy. This became especially true when I decided to use it to crush raw walnuts. Oh yes, I did. I've long since moved on from the typical plants+synths tandem and try to bring food into the scenario as much as possible, so I put some walnuts on a sturdy work table and smashed away (the walnuts were between plastic), obliterating those poor unsuspecting food items into smithereens. I was using the Hammer to FM the Joranalogue Cycle 5 using its Variwave output (which was being slowly modulated, with a sine LFO), and since the accelerator of the Hammer was mostly in the higher octaves being close to a 180º angle, it was the sound of the walnuts screaming. Typing this now makes me feel a bit like an ogre, but I was constantly telling myself that nuts have no feelings, and therefore that it was perfectly fine. Oh, the lies we tell ourselves. Bigger swings brought out more dramatic sounds and movement—bringin' down the hammer!—until I started to feel guilty (and hungry), and decided to stop. And have a snack. Of pulverized nuts. While I can't say that no walnuts were harmed during this experiment, they tasted pretty fine.
There are some caveats here. First, I would love to have the ability to get into LFO range with the Hammer for modulation use. There are way too many cool applications, from opening filters and VCAs to controlling effect amounts, that would benefit from the Hammer's idiosyncratic output. As well, if it could be used as a trigger/gate that could also be really interesting, though I suppose you could use the Hammer (or any hammer) to hit/activate a patched up gate or trigger switch.
It should go without saying that any instrument made so that you can swing, bash, crush things and (ahem) tenderize will find much use in the Waveform synth dungeon/test cook kitchen. While patching, tweaking, pressing, and touching are all nice physical interactions one has daily with an electronic instrument/modular synth, any "out-of-the-ordinary" way to become more physically involved with sound creation/manipulation is welcomed. Vulcan's Hammer is an interesting instrument: fun, quirky, and not as dangerous as it sounds, and is a good time and a unique way to create and interact with sound. Looking forward to the release of Vulcan's Sawzall.
Price: $199

electrofaustus.com