Mini Drive

DIY Drive FX module

The Mini Drive is a 4HP Drive/Distortion module inspired by the classic Minimoog input gain. Mini Drive has two inputs which are higher and lower gain – but if you use both they’re the same level mixed. The Drive knob goes from zero/silent to lots of gain. It’s a dirty gain for modular level and works well with line inputs – like a drum machine. It’s not suited as an external input for guitar.

Using this module is a great way to make a polite sound source into something less polite, but always experiment with the levels! – the output can sound completely different depending on the settings and it can also be used to just add a nice bit of warmth to your input.

Mini Drive also works very well in feedback loops! The classic minimoog trick is taking the audio output and adding it back after the oscillators, before the filter through this circuit. So the filter is in a feedback loop which will add resonance and fuzz. If you patch one output directly to an input then you can achieve feedback tones. Another idea is to patch sound (radio music, or a Osc/env/filt voice) into ‘low’ and one output to the main out. Then patch the second out to a filter, or a delay or reverb, and the output from that back into ‘high’ then turn up and add what happens. If the feedback isn’t wild, invert it with an attenuverter before going back into high.

While it doesn’t have CV in you can either put a VCA or a filter before to modify the amount of grime, or get more experimental and try blasting an LFO or a sequence into one input to see what it does to audio in the other input. The outputs are passive multed together.

https://www.thonk.co.uk/shop/music-thing-minidrive/