First of all, thank you for all this good advice!

NP

first of all - bigger case - but keep this one and add 6u of 104hp

Yes, that is obvious by now, haha. I will order more rails and put together a nice case for it. I'm a woodworker by trade so I have some nice materials for it laying around. I kind of like the 1U form factor, is it worth it to include a couple of rails for this, or is it mostly a gimmick for keeping cases small? Until I get a use for it it can be covered up by a nice wooden panel.

1u is a tricky question - lots of people like it, but it really is just a way of cramming in a bit more without using an extra 3.5"

as for is it good value? in terms of building cases - I don't think so - a pair of rails is a pair of rails, so the same price as for 3u - if you are a wood worker then in all likelihood the cost of materials is effectively nothing, depending on what lengths of wood you can buy in - whenever I've built cases the piece of wood I bought would have easily had enough space for either - and they still take power slots!

as for functionality - there's nothing compelling enough to put a 1u row in, if you can fit a 3u, imo, and you can fit way more in 3u/104hp, than in 1u/104hp - at least 3 times as much... also I think it often encourages people to marginalize utility modules - which imo are equally important as sound sources or modifiers, or modulation sources!

personally I wouldn't bother, but don't let me put you off!

the befaco excalibus is a great DIY power supply

Do you think my uZeus with the booster brick will be too small for this? For what I paid for it (used) it seems to deliver good juice?

quite possibly, yes - always remember you should lead 30% headroom on all rails to allow for inrush... worth noting is that whatever brick you run for the uZeus -ve rail is maxed out at 500mA

As for PNW, Maths and the multi-utility/effects/thingies they are all on my wishlist and I hope to be able to add them to my system in the future, but right now the budget is a little tight. Never seen the Xaoc devices before, so thank you for bringing them up, they look super useful.

Unless something used pops up, I think my next shopping cart will be filled with DIY filters, envelopes, and LFOs. I kind of hoped O&C could do a lot of this for me. I had my hands on a used WASP, but some other dude offered almost shop prize for it.

yeah used prices can be insane at the moment, but unless you can get at least 20% off, I would buy new, if you can - support and warranty are often useful...

one thing to pay attention to - work out the cost per channel and if the DIY version is comparable at that level - for example the tta/buchla quad function generator is about 200(insert major currency) - which works out at 50/channel - it's quite difficult to get a DIY function for much less than this - so once you factor in time etc... it's not always worth it... but sometimes it's fun - my racks are about 50/50 DIY and bought...

Thanks again for the good advice, gotta go write a letter to Santa..

-- Geir74

good luck with that!

"some of the best base-level info to remember can be found in Jim's sigfile" @Lugia

Utility modules are the dull polish that makes the shiny modules actually shine!!!

sound sources < sound modifiers < modulation sources < utilities