Unofficial Firmware Mod · Original 1010music Blackbox
A free, unofficial firmware mod for the original 1010music Blackbox. Solo in the mixer, chords on the Keys screen, Elektron-style note conditions, SP-1200 style lo-fi, a granular delay, and a pile of other stuff I wanted on mine.
It's free and the code is open on GitHub. Drop your email and I'll send you the link with the install steps, plus a note whenever a new build is out (new FX, fixes).
No spam. Just Blackbox mod builds. Original Blackbox only, not Blackbox 2.
Here's the repo. The same link and the install steps are on their way to your inbox, and I'll email you when a new build is out.
Open the GitHub RepoWatch
Build 3.1.n
Everything here runs on top of 1010music's own 3.1.9 firmware. The stock firmware stays in place and the mod adds to it, so the Blackbox you know is still all there.
MIX now cycles Mixer, Mute, Solo. Tap pads to solo them (they go yellow) and everything else mutes. Clear the solo and the mutes you had before come back.
On the Slicer waveform screen the bottom knobs move the selected slice's Start and End, and the top-right knob zooms the waveform, centred on whichever marker you moved last.
Four new modulation sources that fire whenever pad 1 plays (that's where my kick lives). Four shapes: two exponential, a pump, and a straight line. Point one at a pad's Level with a negative Amount and it ducks, no compressor needed.
The top-right knob on the Keys screen picks a chord shape, 16 of them. Extra notes come from the scale you set, so it stays in key, plus a few parallel m7 / m9 / Mj7 shapes for house stabs. Chords record into the sequencer.
Elektron-style conditions in the piano roll's PLAY list, 1:2 through 8:8. Play this note on the 1st of every 4 loops, that kind of thing. They sit next to the stock percentages.
Stock "Interp" becomes "Fidelity", with SP-1200, SP-12, S950 and MPC60 modes. 12-bit at the old machine's sample rate, and pitching a sample down gets grittier the way it does on those samplers. There are plain low-rate crunch settings too.
The pad filter is now 24 dB per octave with the same knob ranges. Push Res past noon and it starts to drive, so it growls a bit.
The stock Overdrive is replaced with a warmer soft saturation that darkens as you push it, on the same knob. In the SP / MPC Fidelity modes it acts like slamming the sampler's inputs.
The compressor On / Off becomes a list (Stock, Glue, Punch, Opto, Squash, Limit) and there's a threshold setting now.
FX2 gets a Type setting, so you can pick a tighter Room next to the stock plate, with its own Size, Mod, Early and Width controls.
FX1 gets a Type setting too. Munchi is a granular delay, glitchy repeats on one side of the Wand knob and a delay that blooms into reverb on the other, with Freeze. It follows the Blackbox tempo.
On stock, a note you add just ahead of the playhead waits a full loop before it plays. Now it plays on this pass. (Really close placements can still miss.)
Before You Install
It installs from the SD card the same way a normal firmware update does (hold BACK + INFO at power-on). Going back to stock is the same thing with the stock file, so keep that file somewhere safe. The repo's README has the full walkthrough.
Straight Talk
I built this for my own Blackbox and I'm sharing it as is. It's one guy's unit and one guy's testing, so there are bugs. The ones I know about right now:
If you find something else, open an issue on GitHub.
Free and Open
The repo is public, so you don't need to give me your email to get the mod. The list is just the easy way to hear about new builds.
Blackbox Mod on GitHub