Shear Electronics unveils Relic, an eight-voice analog polysynth

Shear Electronics has introduced Relic, a discrete analog polyphonic synthesizer built around eight independent voice cores, according to Synthtopia. Each voice has its own analog signal path and its own digital processor, which generates that voice's envelopes and LFOs.

The instrument grew out of the company's Relic-6 prototype, first announced in 2017. Every voice carries two SEM-topology voltage-controlled oscillators, sixteen in all, calibrated from C0 to C7 with a wider uncalibrated range. Each voice also uses seven discrete VCAs based on LM13700 transconductance amplifiers, with automatic calibration.

The Supervariable VCF works in four dimensions: cutoff, resonance, bandwidth and filter profile. It sweeps between classic two-pole high-pass, notch and low-pass responses, and adds band-pass, X-filter and two-, three- and four-pole low-pass modes. The filter profile itself can be voltage-controlled.

Each voice has four envelopes with delay, attack, hold, decay, sustain and release stages, plus four LFOs with eight waveforms, including standard and bipolar shapes. Relic is four-part multitimbral with a four-zone voice allocator, and its memory holds 512 programs of four patches each. The front panel has eight hyperfine encoders, a main lightfader bar and eight lightfader minibars.

Shear Electronics says the first production run is under way, with a lead time of 16-20 weeks.