I may possibly have motivated the step up to the posher TipTop oscillators by claiming a savings from making do without a dedicated LFO. But that was many paragraphs ago and the sacrifice has served its purpose. Of course I need a dedicated LFO! I’ll go basic here as well since my oscillators do support LFO frequencies and I think I should be able to get an LFO out of Reason via the second CV output of the MIDI-CV interface. The Doepfer A-145 looks decent enough and costs a reasonable 65 Euros. It generates sine, square, triangle, sawtooth and inverted sawtooth waves and the cycle can be synchronised via a reset input. The frequency range goes from somewhere around 0.01Hz to 4-5kHz.

I like using stepped random LFO waveforms for pads but those are not provided by the VCOs or LFOs I’m considering. Because of this I’m matching the A-118 Noise generator with an A-148. The A-148 is a Sample and Hold module; it has a sample input and a trigger input and will sample the level of the input whenever a trigger arrives and hold that level on the output until the next trigger arrives. Sample. And hold. Pretty simple. With this I can connect the noise source to the sample input and a square wave from an LFO to the trigger input and Chewbacca! : a stepped random waveform with the rate of change controlled by the LFO! It’s magic! Expensive, possibly pointless magic…

LFO summary:
1 Doepfer A-145 LFO
1 Doepfer A-148 Dual S&H