Music Thing Modular Turing Machine MkII Black

This Music Thing Modular Turing Machine Mk2 was expertly assembled from a full kit from Thonk and works perfectly. It is in excellent condition and has home use only in a smoke free household. It comes with ribbon cable and screws.

The Turing Machine Mk2 is a 10HP unit which generates strings of random voltages that can be locked into looping sequences. These sequences can be allowed to slip, changing gradually over time. This module was inspired by the long history of shift register pseudorandom synth circuits, including the Triadex Muse, Buchla 266 Source of Uncertainly and Grant Richter’s Noisering.

Extract from Sound-on-Sound review: The key control on the main panel is a large friendly black knob with no markings of any kind, barring the abstract panel graphic behind it. All you need to know is that in the 12 o’clock position the on-board shift register generates a stream of random voltages, in sync with the clock pulse presented at the Clock (in) socket, and, depending on the number of steps set by the Length switch (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8 ,12, 16) present at the output jack, something like a random looping sequence. You can ‘lock’ this sequence by rotating the knob all the way clockwise (five o’clock) if you hear something you particularly like, and are quick-witted enough! So far so good, but the real magic occurs when you now reduce the knob position into the four o’clock to one o’clock zone. Now the sequence will start to ‘slip’ as some of the sequence notes are replaced, one by one, with new data from the register. This slip occurs faster as you move from three o’clock to 12, at which point the register is again constantly refreshing. For ‘on the fly’ reset, the Write switch when depressed injects a ‘zero’, which might be a better label, or even ‘clear’.

If you are going to use this data melodically then the Scale knob sets the output range, from nothing to several octaves (5V I guess), though you will need a Quantizer in line for full-on Western 12-tone work. So what happens if you turn the big knob to the left, I hear you ask? I wasn’t sure either! It seems that at fully anti-clockwise (seven o’clock) you get ‘lock’ again, but it will double the length of the sequence: five on the switch becomes 10 ‘notes’. Time spent getting used to manipulating the knob will soon give you confidence that you are achieving a kind of control over proceedings, though I was never completely certain! And if you fancy conceding to chaos, then a CV input allows external control of the big knob. Wild! Rounding out the panel is a ‘noise’ out jack which, er, outputs noise, and a ‘pulses’ output that presents a rhythmic pattern in sync with the sequencer clock which appears to only ‘go high’ for register steps over 1.5V. The result is a locked cyclic pattern of triggers which will also mutate with the ‘notes’, the combination of which kept me amused for hours.