ALM describe the all‑analogue Mega Milton as a ‘smorgasbord’ of handy utilities, “designed to greatly extend the functionality of a Eurorack system”. They’re not wrong: flip it on its side and you’ve got something like a miniature system of five or six individual modules (in fact, a 1U version with this precise layout would not be unwelcome in my system). I say ‘five or six’ because many of these have little bonus features that really help give the Mega Milton its raison d’être. At the top is a stereo ‘Line‑Euro’ level converter, which also works as a dual‑mono breakout. Next down is a four‑input summing mixer. Below this is a slew limiter, then a sample & hold circuit with noise generator (also with its own output). At the bottom is a buffered, three‑way multiple with red and green LEDs to indicate positive and negative polarity.
Now, it’s not much use for me to divulge the individual functions and effectiveness of these circuits, because not only would I soon find myself segueing into a technique piece and explaining some of the basics of modular (though do let us know if that would be of interest), it’s also the case that essentially these functions either work or they don’t. And they do. It’s also worth saying; if you don’t feel confident knowing what any of these does, now is a good time to give it a quick Google. It’s very much worth it. Nonetheless, there are still a few quirks here that make the Mega Milton worth anyone’s time, whether their system is replete with utilities or not, so let’s imagine a scenario that might use the lion’s share of its functionality.
The Line‑Euro section is not only useful for boosting external audio up to modular level; its 12dB of analogue gain means it can saturate and distort modular signals nicely, too. Mult any harmonically interesting sound — say, a cluster of oscillators — through it for some tasty parallel tone‑shaping. Need a mixer for that paralleling? Use the one just below. In need of a mult? The Mega Milton has you covered for that as well. The buffered mult is useful for both CV and audio, and its LEDs make for a quick and handy visual for anything from modulation to sequencing. On that note, why not patch a sequencer into the slew limiter just above for slipping and sliding between sequencer values? Then fire gates into the Enable input to rhythmically switch those slides on or off.
There are multitudes here: plenty of self‑patching potential and reams of creative possibilities.
We could also control our now‑saturated oscillators’ level from the Line‑Euro section for a bit more tonal balancing: the Mix section can be a conventional four‑channel summing mixer, but its fourth input has an extra trick up its sleeve in that it has an attenuator for managing its level, plus its own output that will break it out from the rest of the mix if patched. There might perhaps have been space for all the inputs of the Mix section to have their own attenuators, but that’s hardly a complaint, since I feel like it’s rare I’d have need for that. The only thing we haven’t used in our patch so far is the sample & hold. While it’s tempting to default to the noise generator for a CV source, we could perhaps be a little more creative and use it to downsample an LFO that’s modulating our oscillators in some way, maybe clocking it to our sequencer in the process. In conclusion, then, there are multitudes here: plenty of self‑patching potential and reams of creative possibilities. The Mega Milton does exactly what it says on the tin, and what a gloriously plain tin it is, too.
£160
$199