az-5

a reactor that clicks

20 HP

A small reactor inside: its power comes out as a CV and its clicks as triggers, timed as a Geiger counter times them. Pull the rods and it runs away; run it hot and it stalls in its own poison. And one lit button that should stop it all, which surges first.

The AZ-5 panel: black, with a steel tower in gold dots seen from below, its legs and cross-braces closing round a round core of small square-set lights of bare circuit board, the lit AZ-5 button in its middle and eight square lights for the rods among them, and an arc of nineteen marks over it from 0 to 3.6. RODS, the big knob, sits high in the middle with STEAM and POISON either side and two jacks over them; POWER, CLOCK and CLICKS down the left, DOSE, the AZ-5 jack and SURGE down the right. az-5 at the top, daylight noise at the bottom.

Turn a knob: drag it, roll the wheel over it or use the arrow keys; a double click puts it back. AZ-5 is a button: press it to drop the rods, press it again to let them out. The patches step on by themselves until you touch anything.

What you hear is the rack AZ-5 plays: its clicks on the hats, its power on the pad's filter, its dose on the bass and the drums. It's all made in the page as you listen.

example patches

The reactor, the counter and every out here are AZ-5's engine as it's designed, running in your browser. The drums, the bass and the pad are a stand-in for the rest of a rack.

The reactor

More power makes more steam, and more steam makes more power, so past a point it runs away. Running hot leaves poison behind, so backing off can stall it.

RODS: the control rods, all the way in to all the way out. Full left it's cold, a click every few seconds. Noon chugs at five to eight a second, breathing. Full right it climbs twenty-fold in a second or two, a rattle of forty a second; with STEAM up it runs away for good.
STEAM: how much the power feeds itself. Low, it's tame and RODS sets the power smoothly. From three o'clock it surges and dips on its own; at full every surge runs away and crashes, again and again.
POISON: how hard running hot poisons it afterwards. At zero it comes back at once. At full it lies dead for ten seconds or more after a burst, the rods all the way out making no difference, then lurches back.
The CVs: RODS and STEAM each have a jack, a tenth of the knob's travel a volt.

The clicks

Each click comes at random, as a real counter's do, at a rate the power sets, and now and then a quick burst where one click sets off a few more. In a strong enough field the counter chokes, as a real one does: silence.

CLOCK: patch a clock and the clicks wait for its next step. Busier power, busier steps; a burst comes out as a roll of up to four.
The core: each click lights one of its caps, a burst a little cluster. The whole core glows with the power, and the eight square caps light as far as the rods are in.

AZ-5

The button that should stop everything. It drops every rod, but their tips go in first, so it surges before it dies down.

AZ-5: press it to hold it, its cap lit; press again to let go. A gate at its jack holds it while the gate is high. Let go, and the rods come back out to wherever RODS is.
The surge: small at noon, a quick flurry and then quiet. Worst with the power low, the rods out and the poison deep. Then the core breaks: a burst, silence while the counter chokes, and a crackle that takes minutes to fade.

What comes out

CLICKS: a trigger for every click.
POWER: the power as a CV: 0 V at a hundredth of noon's, 4 V at noon, 8 V at a hundred times it. Into a filter, the band breathes with the reactor.
DOSE: climbs with every click and drains over seconds, 0 to 10 V. The arc over the core reads it, and its last mark is 3.6: past that it stays where it is, whatever happens.
SURGE: a gate while the power is climbing fast: every runaway, and the button's surge.

Specs

Format

Width: 20 HP
Controls: 3 knobs (RODS's big), a lit button

Inputs

RODS, STEAM: CV, ±5 V, a tenth of the knob's travel a volt
AZ-5: gate, held while over 1 V
CLOCK: clock, rising past 1 V

Outputs

CLICKS: trigger, 5 V for 2 ms
POWER: CV, 0 to 8 V
DOSE: CV, 0 to 10 V
SURGE: gate, 5 V