Hopkin Instrumentarium: Weighted Strings
Talk to our Experts
Talk to our Experts
Have questions about this product? Our team is here to help!
- Call us: (647) 953-1559
- Email: contact@blackoutaudio.com
- Live Chat: Monday-Friday 12:30pm to 7:30pm
Shipping, Returns & Financing
Orders above $199 qualify for Free Standard Shipping.
A few orders are not eligible: items that need specialty shipping (certain cases, stands and other gear that requires special handling), and orders shipping to Newfoundland and Labrador, the Northwest Territories or Nunavut.
Carriers sometimes charge far more for oversized freight to certain locations. In that rare case, we pay most of the extra and ask you to cover a small part.
For international shipping, please request a quote through the contact form.
| Province | Standard Shipping | Express Shipping |
|---|---|---|
| ON | $19 | $39 |
| QC, MB | $29 | $69 |
| Other | $39 | $119 |
Payment & Financing Options
We accept credit and debit cards, Apple Pay, Google Pay, Shop Pay, and PayPal.
Affirm and Sezzle financing are available for most products. For Affirm, select Shop Pay when checking out. Please note that order cancellations or refunds are not available for financed purchases.
Sezzle: eligible customers can split a purchase into 4 interest-free payments over 6 weeks. Approval and payment terms depend on the purchase amount and an eligibility check, may not be available in all provinces or territories, and are shown at checkout. Payment options are provided through Sezzle. For more information, please see sezzle.com/how-it-works.
Affirm: eligible customers can pay over time in monthly instalments. Your rate and available terms depend on an eligibility check based on creditworthiness, your purchase amount, and applicable provincial limits, and may not be available in all provinces or territories. Actual terms, the payment schedule, and any required down payment are shown at checkout. Payment options are provided through Affirm Canada Holdings Ltd. For more information, please see affirm.com/how-it-works.
Description
About
Weighted Strings is a set of two amazing custom creations from the mind of master instrument inventor Bart Hopkin: The Weighted Lyre and Weighted Zither. These handcrafted experimental instruments use small weights on the strings to alter overtone relationships and create unusual, beautiful sounds. Made of wood and metal, they have a richly acoustic essence that resounds brightly through each plucked note. The Lyre has 17 main strings, as well as three additional strings that run over a narrow neck and can be fretted. The weights on the Lyre strings are carefully placed to prominently bring out an octave overtone. The Zither has 34 chromatically tuned main strings. Unlike the Lyre, the weights on these strings are not placed to bring out any particular overtones. As a result, the overtone recipes are highly inharmonic and random, varying from string to string, with highly inharmonic tone qualities. We've faithfully sampled every interesting sound we could get out of these instruments, with three stereo mic positions: Close, Room, & Contact. We've also included a wide selection of custom FX presets and plenty of our signature sound-designed ambient content, crafted from the raw acoustic source to give you complete creative freedom.
Content
The Kontakt interface includes a suite of automation-ready sound-shaping controls to give you total creative flexibility. You have control over swell, attack, release, offset, vibrato, filter, pitch (coarse & fine), articulation switching, cross-fading and layering, and so much more. This library comes with an adaptable LFO system, with selectable LFO shape, modulation target parameter, speed, intensity, tempo-syncing and fade-in time. You can also apply your choice of 12 lowpass, high-pass and FX filters, with assignable modulation targets such as velocity, modwheel, expression, after-touch, key position and step-sequencer table control. Our customizable arpeggiator offers a velocity table and control over arp direction, timing, swing, randomization and duration. We’ve included a key and scale lock system to constrain your notes to common scales and keys for easy melodic composition and live performance. The interface is rounded-out by our modular FX rack panel, with 27 different DSP effect modules that you can assign in any of 8 available slots, in any order that you wish. You’ll find classic phaser, flanger, delay, distortion, amp and cab simulators, compressors, EQ, rotator and so much more. The Reverb effect includes our favorite convolution reverb impulse responses, including 99 different rooms, halls, chambers and outdoor environments, plus another 40 custom FX impulses to radically transform the sound and open up whole new worlds of musical possibility. We’ve added a great bank of FX rack chain factory presets to get you started!














