Benjolin Gorga, Andreas Siagian’s Yogyakarta Eurorack edition
Rob Hordijk’s wonderful Benjolin has been recreated in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, by squaresolid / instrumentasia (aka builder Andreas Siagian). Meet Benjolin – Gorga, in Eurorack – or, uh, Asiarack!
The late Rob Hordijk made a great impact as a person and engineer, embodied in his chaos-powered Benjolin. It’s a deceptively simple design – two oscillators and a filter at its core. But add in the seemingly magical powers of the Rungler, and it has a spirit all its own. That “bent by design” approach was always in Rob’s work, and it seems a perfect fit for the noise-punk scene of Indonesia – which is now well into making its own hardware. (Eldar Tagi did a great deep dive into the Benjolin and Rob’s legacy for Perfect Circuit last year. The Blippo Box was great, too!)
Andreas’ own version of Benjolin has his own unique touch in design and build, plus that new GORGA name:
GORGA is an art form in the culture of Batak Toba of North Sumatra, Indonesia which inspire the forms of flourishes, undulations and life itself. The panel drawing is known as Gorga Singa-Singa, often placed on the front corners of Batak’s traditional houses for protection. Gorga Singa-Singa is a symbol of wisdom and strength.
What you get is a synthesizer, a chaotic/harmonic, stable-unstable oscillator, and also a source of cross-modulation, all with extensive CV controls 0 and this one has a looper. Andreas was in the process of redesigning Forestcaver’s Benjolin v1.6 when Rob passed away, he says, so Rob – RIP.
Features:
Two oscillators, each with dedicated tuning (rate/frequency) and modulation amount and rungler controls
Rungler internally connected through RUN knobs
CV inputs for oscillator x, y, and filter (plus internal modulation sources for each)
CV modulation amount for filter cutoff
Filter cutoff, resonance, and rangler to cutoff controls
Looper with on/off and pattern controls
Dedicated triangle x, triangle y, pulse, and PWM (x+y) controls, plus XOR output and main output
There are other builds out there, including pre-built Benjolin for Eurorack, but Andreas has shared some useful design tweaks and instructions, a great design/layout and – yeah, that looper!
Check all the source files, including this great new artwork:
