Any one goes to the Superbooth this year?

Hello Everyone,

Is anyone of you going this year to the Superbooth? I finally decide to go and bought the tickets online and booked a hotel in Berlin. I will be there on Thursday and Friday, the late afternoons and most likely the evenings. You can recognise me by wearing a Garfield T-shirt if the weather isn't too cold.

Is it a nice idea to meet a few of us here on modulargrid.net in real, at the Superbooth talk about our fantastic hobby? :-)

If you prefer more a one to one meeting, just send me a private message and we will take it from there. I hope to meet you in Berlin and I look forward to my very first visit to the Superbooth, yeah! :-) Kind regards, Garfield.

Hi Garfield,

I am not going to Superbooth but I'm sure it will be a super fun experience for you. In addition to all the things on your list of must-do items I'll put in my request. If you can find time or happen to stroll by the Rabid Elephant booth please take a look at their new Portal Drum module (not released yet - been in the works for a few years). They showed an earlier iteration of it in 2019 and it looked fantastic in videos I saw. Let us know what you think if you happen to see it.

All the best.

Hi Cmb_,

Pity you can't make it for the Superbooth. Okay, if I don't forget (but I just wrote it down) and have time, I will checkout the Portal Drum module of Rabid Elephant, if that one is on display.

Will let you know once I am back from Superbooth. Kind regards, Garfield.

If someone sees a guy with a ModularGrid shirt on Friday, that's me! Say hello!

One day I'd love to do Superbooth and a European vacation. Right now too many corona vaxx restrictions as an American for me to do much.

Hi Sacguy71,

Yes indeed, I can imagine that you feel that's too troublesome. I just came back tonight from the Superbooth. One had to show at the entrance the QR code for the vaccination and indoors as well as during the concerts/shows one had to wear a masks to cover mouth/nose but other than that it was pretty relaxed regarding Covid.

Superbooth was for me this year the first time, I had already hotel & tickets booked for last year but as we all known for the same reason it had been postponed to this week/weekend and this year instead. I enjoyed it very much, there was a great relaxed atmosphere, tons of time to talk to the manufacturers. Everybody, at least to those I spoke, seem to be in a good mood, friendly and willing to share tons of information, making the Superbooth a great event. At least that is my impression.

Due to Covid situation, less manufacturers were participating, logically of course. Due to that fact, I was missing some of the major North American brands like Make Noise, Intellijel & Co however totally understandable.

Let's see if next year things are getting easier regarding travel and meeting at events, would be nice to meet you at one of the future Superbooths :-) Kind regards, Garfield.

Cool deal @Garfield yeah I cannot take vaccines due to allergic reaction. Years ago I had one that put me in the hospital and almost killed me. Masks I can do tests I can do. But not able to vaxx so that rules out stuff for a while longer. No worries I’m having fun at home with modular and trying things out now with Beads such fun with Rings and Marbles for generative ambient music.

Hi Sacguy71,

Sorry to hear that you have allergic reactions regarding vaccines :-( Glad to hear though that you still enjoy modular :-)

Having said that... haven't heard from you much lately, any nice video for us to share? :-) Kind regards, Garfield.

Thanks Garfield. I made a new video with Beads and will upload tomorrow.

Hi @Garfield and everyone check this out

Hi Cmb_,

I just returned from Superbooth and promised you to report about it, especially Rabid Elephant. I had been in the main building, i.e. the FEZ Building and arrived at the second last booth and I was getting worried that perhaps Rabid Elephant wouldn't be at the Superbooth, perhaps because Covid? You wouldn't know, right?

That second last booth was Rabid Elephant though :-) The good news, on the stand of Rabid Elephant the Portal Drum module was part of the rack that was on display at Superbooth, so lucky :-)

I will be honest with you, till the moment I met the guy from Rabid Elephant (my apologises to this person, I forgot his name :-( ), I was for myself not too much interested in Rabid Elephant modules however after this very friendly guy explained in a detailed and nice way his modules, I am getting some serious appetite for his modules :-) I still feel they are somewhat expensive however at least I do understand now why you are interested in modules of this brand.

The fellow is pretty young, at least compared to myself however his explanation was clear, good and understandable. Our main focus was, on your request, the Drum Portal module, which he had there on display. I can talk most probably for hours about this module however to summarise this a little bit: It's amazing how much functionality has been packed into this module without being over-complicated and though the module isn't small (sorry I forgot the HP size definitely more than 10 HP, towards 20 HP? Not sure about its size, sorry) it's a hell of a drum module! Besides the "usual drum possibilities", like tone, attack and that kind of stuff there are seriously many (but can't remember them all by heart) extra functions possible with either knobs or the many small switches that have been provided with this module. The knobs are... how to call them? Double knobs? So one knob exists of two elements that can be turned, so per double-knob you can adjust already 2 parameters, that seems a bit odd, the knobs are quite tall, he said he wants to look for a bit smaller versions of that, but after a short while you really get used to it and at least to me it didn't really disturb me from a user interface point of view. For myself I felt the switches were a little too small however his argument was that he didn't want to make them too tall since that would cause the chance of accidentally switch them over while turning for example a knob. That might be indeed a good point (though I never had that with any of my modules ever, so far), so if you don't mind those quite tiny small switches, I guess the user interface is just good, nothing really wrong with it.

The price, he wasn't sure yet, for the North America market he guessed it would be in the 700 - 800+ category somewhere, for Europe he doesn't know yet, because of import taxes, likely higher though. So for me, living in Europe, I feel that's a steep price on the other hand I have to be honest here that looking at what this module can do, that's seriously amazing! So for people who are looking for a serious good drum module that has tons of functionality (no menu diving at all, just knobs and switches) perhaps indeed this is worth it.

I also asked about the availability, that was the question where he had most difficulty to answer that. Not because he didn't want to however because he is missing an IC chip that has a shortage on the current market situation. He told me that in fact the module is ready, just except the IC that's missing. So he couldn't give a clear answer to that, just because he wouldn't really know when he would be able to get that chip on stock.

I have to admit that it is pretty difficult to check out a module for someone because there is the difference in how we each of us are looking at things and how to judge certain experiences. I hope I could be of some help here to you and that at least some of the information is kind of helpful to you.

To summarise this: this drum module is certainly for people who really want a serious drum module that is way beyond the average drum module. This module is able to handle so much, can do so many things, yet it is still very easy to handle its functionalities with a good user interface experience.

Kind regards, Garfield.

I am saving up for Knobcom next year and maybe Superbooth if covid restrictions and vaxx mandates go away.

Hi Garfield,

Thank you so much for the informative and detailed report. And a second big thanks for taking the time to look at the module. I had seen videos of Rabid Elephant showing a prototype at Superbooth 2019 and it seemed like this was going to be something of interest for me, especially because at that time they were talking about releasing it as a stand-alone as well as a eurorack module. Seems like they scrapped the stand-alone (too bad because that is what I would have preferred) and are just going with the module.

I received an email from Rabid Elephant yesterday stating that preorders are open but it seems like the release is still in the distant future. Not sure if I will jump on it but time will tell.

I have their Natural Gate module and I think it is fantastic. It can really deliver a cool vibe.

All the best,
Charles

Hi Charles,

You are welcome!

I only have seen the Eurorack version of this Portal Drum module, no stand-alone version or something like that, at least not seen at the Superbooth. Yes, take it easy with an expensive decision like this. Once the module gets released and you have an opportunity to test it locally at your local dealer then try to do that first before you decide.

Sounds like they indeed still have this chip shortage issue, that I managed about, since the release is still in the distant future.

Please let us know if you decide to buy it or better make a demo jam out of it if you got that module. I am curious how you will use it :-) Kind regards, Garfield.