Knobula Kickain
Rob Redman gets his kick-drum-side-chain-compression fix
Knobula hit the ground running with the wonderful Poly Cinematic. Following up with the Kickain should solidify them as a top developer, as it is a truly excellent module. Following the same design ethos of the Poly Cinematic, it is sensibly laid out, with a workflow that’s logical and well labelled. Each section has a coloured background for quick identification, rather than the more commonly seen plain black or silver. The 12hp size feels right for the controls, not too big but spacious enough for the good quality pots and toggle switches.
Let’s start with the 909-based kick, which is stunningly good. All the control needed to dial in your sounds, from drive, tune and level, to click, bend and punch. There’s even a reverb onboard, which acts with the attack and decay controls, so a single twist of the reverb knob does an awful lot and sounds just right. These controls give Kickain a massive range of kick drum sounds, and finding the flavour you want is intuitive and fast. It sounds excellent and playing it live is a joy and you can easily dial it into your rig or gig. An LED shows clipping and the large trigger button helps visualise the module’s output as it glows in accordance with each impact. There’s also a bass cut switch to help keep things manageable, with 40 and 60Hz settings.
Patching options are vital to the success of any module, as it can be a big factor in whether it gets used or not, no matter how good the output is and Knobular provides here. As well as inputs for trigger, accent, volts per octave and decay, there are stereo ins and outs that act as a send and return for processing in other areas of your rig, a rarely seen but
