SSSR Labs SM630 AWS (Alisa Wave Shaper)

SSSR Labs AWS is the first collaborative design by Dmitry Shtatnov and Vyacheslav Grigoriev. The module is inspired by the «Harmonics» waveshaper section of the Soviet monophonic keyboard synthesizer, Alisa-1377.

I watched several video demonstrations of Eurorack wave folders and was most impressed with this one.

Plus the fact it’s available as a factory kit I bought from synthCube at a very reasonable price clinched my decision.

Construction

The assembly manual for this kit is pretty good, having step-by-step instructions and illustrations. I didn’t follow the assembly order exactly; everything I wanted to use washable flux solder with was done in one go.

The two PC boards come attached with a break line carved in between them. This made it easy to install most parts at one time. As shown, I used the IC sockets from the kit. Once the boards are separated, they go back to back, electrically connected by five small header pairs, soldered to the back sides of each board.

Assembly tip: It was almost impossible to fit the boards together leaving the headers unsoldered, as directed in the instructions. I carefully soldered one pin of each female header to board 2, making sure they looked aligned. Then it was much easier to fit the boards together, finally soldering all the pins. At that point you are done with board 1 and only have to fit the pots, switch, and jacks.

Chips, chips…

There isn’t a BOM with this kit; it comes with seven ICs, one of which is a resistor network. Although the instructions refer to TL074 op amps, the kit came with three ST Micro TL064CN without any explanation. Since I didn’t have any Texas Instruments TL074, I substituted T.I. TL084ACN.

Two of the 8-pin chips have a Russian part number, which was not printed in any of the docs that I could copy from and search for. KP140??708, where the ?? are Russian characters.

The final step is to use the three plastic standoffs to hold the boards together. They simply snap in. No screws are needed.

Completed Module

The following short compares the AWS to Instruo Athru. It’s hard to get the levels, depth of modulation, etc., to comparable settings, but it’s pretty close. Four sections:

• AWS dry
• Athru dry
• AWS with delay
• Athru with delay

AWS has crisper peaks and is cleaner, while Athru has a fuller sound, a bit grittier too.