There was a Eurorack case for seventy bucks. It came with a power supply. It came with distribution cables. I pressed buy it now. I thought oh shit.
Behringer makes cheap modules. I've been buying them and hooking them up with cheap aux cables I buy in bulk.
I appreciate the precision German engineering of Doepfer's design. But HP. HP is a problem. It doesn't make sound. Four bucks an inch is the low going rate. Without power supply. Without power distribution. Even from Behringer.
I bought an eight dollar craft crate from Walmart. Pulled part of it apart. Glued the pulled off parts back where I needed them. The first batch of wood screws came from China. Came from Ali Express. They looked cool with their allen heads. But allen heads are friction. I bought two hundred brass screws from McMaster-Car. They don't look as cool. They work better.
Crafting grates modified for purpose, and handmade cables gets me down to about a dollar an inch. Twenty cents an HP and it's good enough. I've got four now. Over 200 HP worth. They are good enough. Maybe better than good enough. Small cases give me meta-modules. Another abstraction layer. Place a voice in a case. All I need for a quick experiment. Sometimes.
Yes, cheap cases are better than good enough. Ten bucks adds a case. I bought a 914 fixed filter bank. For cheap because HP and case space is a fetish.Someone wanted the HP rather than the capability. I'm looking for a second to do it in stereo. Daniel Fisher made a video for Sweetwater. He knows synths. It's a good idea.
When I run out of HP, I can buy it at Walmart at 10pm on a Tuesday within a hundred miles of anywhere in the US. That's engineering.