The most complex designs are available only in pre-assembled form, not as kits. The Colour modules themselves, some of which are designed by DIYRE and others by third-party manufacturers, vary rather more in complexity, meaning that some are easy builds while others are more challenging. It’s thus a great place to start if you’re thinking of building your own gear. If you can solder, you’ll be able to build them quite easily. If you’re thinking of the DIY route, the Palette and the mic preamp are among the simplest self-build projects you could wish to find: all parts are included (with nice features such as DIL sockets to make it easy to place and replace ICs) and the instructions are clear. Also, as the two host units and many of the Colours are available either ready-made or in DIY kit form, it would be perfectly possible to build such devices yourself. Indeed, the two companies who sell pre-assembled Colour units in their respective territories (Big Bear Audio in the UK/EU and Black Market Modular in the USA) are already developing or offering their own designs. It’s not hard to imagine a stereo version, for example, or bass or guitar stompboxes that can host Colour modules and we may well see third-party manufacturers offer Colour hosting options, in the way many already cater for 990-format op-amps. This being an open platform, I expect to see further variations on this theme emerge. The Palette itself stamps no discernible character of its own on the signal, and its only purposes are to route audio through or past the various Colour modules you’ve installed and to adjust the levels of the audio going in and coming out. As you’ll see, though, there’s more than that on offer, from filters and simple delays all the way up to an 1176 FET compressor clone. I say ‘saturation’, as that’s where this concept started out. The other, announced while I was evaluating this lot, is a mic preamp which can host a single Colour the preamp itself is intended to be clean-sounding, and you then choose the flavour of (bypassable) saturation you wish to add. The Palette is a mono, electronically balanced line-level device that can accommodate up to three Colours, and it’s one of two different 500-series hosts offered by DIYRE. Under review are the Palette, a single-width 500-series host module, and a range of the Colour modules themselves. There’s so much more to this than subminiature modularity, though: once set up, it’s as far from fiddly as you could get, and anyone who enjoys experimenting with analogue saturation should find it rewarding.
![diy 500 series mic pre diy 500 series mic pre](https://dt7v1i9vyp3mf.cloudfront.net/styles/header/s3/imagelibrary/d/diyre_colour_00-aaYGZAFt209INPEsw_AktoqDp3bF1uSm.jpg)
If you’re one of them, you’d better look away now, because the DIYRE (DIY Recording Equipment) Colour system is a modular analogue processor platform that lives inside a single 500-series module. Some people are put off the 500-series format because they think it too fiddly. This novel 500-series module has the potential to be any processor you want!