All your favourite Zwergs are back in town (well Glasgow anyway) as we’ve just had a fresh box of electronic fun from our friends in Germany, MFB. MicroZwerg, NanoZwerg, SchlagZwerg – all the Zwergs!!! Some of them are around 10% cheaper now due to better exchange rates.
Famously diminutive with home spun build quality and design, and even more famously, stupidly large sounding (especially when taking into account aforementioned size), you need to get at least one of these into your studio just so people can say “what’s that daft wee looking thing there” and then you can blow their trousers off with a few notes from one.
We like all the MFB stuff but here’s a couple of belters if you can’t afford to buy every one of them:
MFB 522 BOOM! It’s all about the low end on this superb 808 inspired box. No wait – it’s all about that Clap. No, the crack of the Snare. No, it’s the piercing hish-hish of the Hi Hats. Aaargh – it’s all great. And it’s got MIDI too!
MFB 503 We’ve got a LOT of love for the ultra minimal design of this 909 inspired unit. There’s not much too it except for the thunder and roar of the drum hits, it’s the shizz.
NanoZwerg A seriously compact little unit (smaller than many desktop calculators (VERY Kraftwerk) but with MIDI and CV/Gate. It’s superb for basslines and general analogue squelches. It’s also VERY affordable for what you get.
Microzwerg Not many of these left now. Tiny little semi-modular synth so you can experiment a little with patching control signals to see where it gets you without splashing out a lot of cash or spending three hours working with a bigger modular system and still only getting a slightly weedy buzzing noise as we often do!
SchlagZwerg We’ve always meant to look up the meaning of Schlag in German just to see if it’s as funny as it is in English but haven’t got round to it yet (think it’s something to do with whipped cream in Holland as my failing memory reminds me – Jason). This unit is more for the serious patchers and tweakers. It’s a 16 step drum sequencer with some more advanced patching and routing capabilities for your Drum Sounds and the ability to sequence different sound parameters too (so you can have more movement in your sounds as they play). Takes a bit more getting used to but is the sort of instrument that will surprise and inspire for years to come.