News

  • Sonic State interview

    I had a chat with Paulee from Sonic State talking about how I got into building my own instruments, and how GLOOP developed, have a read!

     

    https://sonicstate.com/news/2025/11/12/a-chat-with-cutlasses-makers-of-gloop/

  • Workshop and Machina Bristronica and SALE

    Thanks to those that came to the workshop we did last Saturday with Thonk and Synth Shed. I really enjoyed it. Everyone seemed to have fun, and all went home with a shiny new GLOOP that they’d built themselves. Employed a desoldering technique I’ve not used before incorporating 4 soldering irons to remove a wrong oriented switch!

    I’m in Bristol this weekend for Machina Bristronica. I’ll be wearing my GLOOP T-shirt, so come and say hello if you see me. For this weekend only I’m doing a very special 20% off discount. Just use the code MACHINA. I’ve never offered discounts before, any probably won’t again for a long time, so if you’ve been thinking about getting one, now is absolutely the time! I’m not exhibiting at Machina and will be attending as a punter so this is my little way of getting in on the action!

     

  • Superbooth 2025

    Just got back from Berlin after attending Superbooth 2025, a synth exhibition with a real festival vibe. I haven’t been since 2017, and I reckon it’s probably twice the size it was back then. The marquees and bungalows outside were a great addition. Gloop didn’t have a stand, but I had a Gloop t-shirt, and some people were kind enough to come and tell me how much they were enjoying the module, which made my day. Had lots of lovely chats with other makers, and everyone was incredibly open and friendly. I even managed to get along to the Berlin Parkrun in Hasenheide. I’ve left inspired, and have taken a couple of days off from my normal job to work on Gloop related projects. Expect new firmware soon!

     

  • Another update

    Gloop Firmware 1.2.0 is available now. We also have Gloops back in stock in our shop and kits available at Thonk. Get the Firmware here

    Change log

    Version 1.2.0

    Features:

    • Pan can now be a CV Target to allow pan control via CV
    • For text lists, such as CV Targets, which you scroll through with the encoder can now be reset to the first option by pressing the corresponding encoder
    • Separating mono and stereo effects. The ‘EFF’ option is now named ‘MEFF’ and only applies to the mono effects (delay and reverb) which can only be applied to a single channel (A or B). All other effects such as bit crush, tape saturation, are stereo, so apply to both channels.
    • Separate Tape Age ‘AGE’ into ‘HISS’ (tape hiss) and ‘AGE’ (random dropouts), moved ‘DEGR’ (loop degrade into the Effects 3 page).
    • Holding down the clear button for 2 second will clear the loop but not the state of the play heads (position, size, speed etc), you must hold for an additional 2 seconds (4 seconds total) to clear those). Previously holding for 2 seconds cleared the buffer and reset the playheads.

     

    Bug fixes:

    • Fixed issue where Audio In level was not respected when overdubbing

  • New Gloop Firmware 1.1.0

    Happy New Year and Happy New Firmware! I hope you all had a lovely holiday. I found some free time to work on a new Gloop firmware (V1.1.0), which you can find, along with an updated manual and instructions on how to flash the firmware, here https://github.com/cutlasses/GloopResources Thanks to those of you that sent me suggestions, some of them have made their way into this update!

     

    All the Gloop DIY kits have sold out, but more boards are currently winging their way to the UK as I type, so should be back in stock at Thonk soon. We still have a handful of built modules available at our shop https://www.cutlasses.co.uk/shop/ (currently shipping to UK and US, with EU coming soon) with a new batch planned for the near future.

     

    Thanks to all of you who have bought Gloop, and thanks to those that have let me know how much you are enjoying them. Please do share any music or videos you make with it, I get a real thrill seeing how people are using it, and it helps me to improve the firmware too!

     

    All the best for 2025!

     

    Firmware 1.1.0 change log

    Features:

    • Split tape effect into
      • Wobble (WOBB) – applies a wow and flutter off simulating a broken tape player
      • Saturation (SAT) – applies tape saturation
      • Age (AGE) – adds tape hiss and random drop outs
    • Added (equal power) panning per tape head (rather than A/B or A+B). Effects are still mono, so when panning tape heads you may want to disable effects. Old behaviour can still be achieved by having pan at 12 o’clock for A+B, and hard left, right for A/B
    • Added CRSF dial (Cross Fade) to “Effects B” menu. Previously all cross-fades were 5ms. You can now vary the length of the cross fade from 5 milliseconds to 1 second. This results in smoother blends when a loop restarts. If the playhead is forced outside of the loop section (for instance when using the JMP modulation, or moving the loop position), the quick cross fade of 5ms is still applied.

     

    Bug fixes:

    • Fixed issue with tape effect wobble, was previously being applied incorrectly and didn’t sound right!
    • Fixed an issue where, if you were modulating the position of the loop segment and this resulted in the play head being constantly restarted, the audio would sound distorted. This was because the playhead couldn’t cross fade quickly enough to the next position. Loop position modulation is now only applied every 50ms (20Hz). You can modulate at a faster rate, but it will be sub-sampled.
    • Improved gain application of gain pots and A/B input mix (now properly logarithmic)
    • Improved calibration menu

  • Gloop Released!

    Gloop was released on Friday! Currently available at Thonk. I’ll be building a small batch soon, so those who aren’t interested in wielding a soldering iron should join the mailing list here to find out when the first batch is available. Don’t worry if you miss out, if the first batch sells well I’ll be doing a bigger one next. It’s really nice to see something that was only intended for my own use to make its way into the world! I hope those who use it enjoy it as much as I do!

  • Gloop – Update

    Been a bit quiet on here recently, and barely played out live as all my free time has been dedicated to getting Gloop in a releasable state (the last 10% of a project really does take up 90% of the time!). For those interested in owning Gloop there will be exciting updates soon. Please join the mailing list if you want to know more about the plans for release.

     

  • Gloop – work in progress

    I thought I’d share how I’m getting on with Gloop, my experimental eurorack performance looper. This version is built using the Electrosmith Daisy Seed. It allows you to record loops (with overdub), and playback with 4 simultaneous play heads. Each play head can be at a different part of the loop, playing at a different speed/pitch, direction and volume. Each play head can also be playing a different area, or sub-loop of the main loop. This can allow you to trim the loop size, play different sections of the main loop with the different play heads or create granular style effects. There is a jitter parameter which controls how much the start of the loop randomly shifts each time the loop restarts.

    It’s essentially the culmination of many of my digital projects, combining what I learnt from making the AudioFreeze, GlitchDelay and my other Looper. Gloop has one big advantage over my other looper, (apart from having a screen) which is that the Daisy has a whopping 64MB of RAM, so I can record the loop directly into RAM, rather than having to worry about recording to SD card, and all of the buffering issues this presents. This allows me to go much further with the firmware, supporting multiple sophisticated play heads, which wouldn’t have been possible with the original version.

    I designed this to be played live, and I’ve used it as most, this year, at vary iterations and states of completion.

    I still want to spend some more time with the firmware, and have started working on some CV and trigger expander modules that connect via I2C. Also the ability to connect a pedal to start and stop the loop, rather than having to press the button. More about those soon. Who knows, maybe I’ll actually try and make Gloop available for sale at some point.

     

    An early prototype testing the OLED screen

  • Braziers Park

    Had a lovely weekend returning to Braziers Park for the International Film Festival, playing with Amy Cutler as RAVINE/MACHINE, after only playing there a few weeks ago for SUPERNORMAL (which was also brilliant, albeit exceptionally hot). We had some technical difficulties with the 16mm projector (bulb not working), but we were still able to incorporate the soundtrack from it, and it allowed us to put the projector centre stage (complete with my LED augments!).
    Braziers is such an enchanting space. It’s been run as a commune, or ‘Intentional Community’ since the 50s. The neo-gothic house is gorgeous, as was the vegan food they fed us. Great to meet some exciting film makers and artists and generally have a great time!

  • Build a DaisyDrone!

    I’ve made the schematics and gerber files available for download on GitHub here!

    DaisyDrone is a drone synth, with 6 sliders, Inspired by @HAINBACH ‘s use of vintage oscillators and test equipment. This combines 18 sine waves. Each slider controls the gain of a set of 3 sine waves at slightly offset pitches centred around a frequency within the key shown in the display. The frequency of the sines increases from left to right. The magic comes from the way they are summed (controlled by the 3-way switch). Either averaged (boring!), or wavefolded with a sine wave or a triangle wave. The wave folding produces the rhythmic elements. An encoder is used to set the note of the base frequency, displayed in the 7 segment display.

    Here’s a little demo of it..