Lunar Lander

Full disclosure: Pulsar Novation gave me a NFR copy of Lunar Lander to test and review.

Lunar Lander is the Pulsar Modular P900's "stand alone" effect modules to be used as:

AU VST VST3 on Windows and OS X.

AAX is apparently planned for a future release, as written into the "First Edition- May 2020" user manual.

The latter being accessible from the UI question mark icon.

Pulsar Modular P900 is a Moog modular VA plugin that deliver that Moog's sound pretty amazingly.

Reason for someone to check out this plugin?

Getting "that sound".

And must be said that it sounds pretty darn good.

Definitely on the pricy side of things, especially considering the plethora of options available at the moment.

Its a niche plugin but it keeps his promises.

Its made of three modules.

Pulsar 931 is an analog delay(bbd (bucket brigade delay)), Pulsar 933 a plate reverb and Pulsar P938 a summing amplifier (saturation module).

Not much parameters to tweak, but still surprisingly versatile as a designer effect tool.

There's time you'll want to go intuitively instead of having the most tweak able machine.

Here, the sum of his parts is greater than the whole.

There's two effect configurations available.

Meaning that you can put the plate reverb before or after the analog delay(bbd).

Comparing the plate effect with others specialized ones surprised me.

It really sounded good to my ears, better in some cases then some dedicated counterparts.

It's gelling well to the source.

Comparing the delay with some others delays wasn't that obvious.

But couple with the saturation module, it definitely shines as a character effect.

As a chorus effect, modulation plus saturation plus short delay sounded quite good in my tests too.

Note that it doesn't use a lot of CPU power plus no latency behaviour while giving high quality results.

Seems to be pretty well coded.

A ducking option that was added following users (many guitarists...) requests is pretty welcomed.

One knob control.

From the manual:

"This is our take on ducking within the technical bounds of how Lunar Lander is designed- so it has a slightly different behavio[u]r as you will notice."

This behaviour worked pretty well for me.

DAW sync is on the road map.

To me, the way the tempo is implemented at the moment is perfect.

Its in total adequacy with the concept of "analog" delay.

But sync would be handy, of course.

The possibility to numerically (using key pad) enter the value would be too.

There's a tap option for the delay alongside a triplet option.

A dot option would be great in a future update to forget about the calculator...

What is missing to me and that would make me buying it at the current $149.00 USD (as of 2020-10-08) price tag?

Some more modules from the Pulsar Modular P900.

More specifically, a LFO for internal modulation (the 924: low frequency oscillator (without cv input)).

The Moog's 904-A Transistor Ladder Low Pass filter and the CP10 "clean" mixer for some added sound design power/versatility.

What would make it totally awesome (to me at least)?

Modularity, like the synth its coming from.

An LFO, an attenuator, a Moog filters and a mixer.

Respectively, the 924: low frequency oscillator (without cv input), the 995 attenuator, the 904-A Transistor Ladder Low Pass and the CP10 "clean" mixer.

Using patch cords like his big brother.

N.

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