Thicket: a polyphonic modular playground built for ugly-beautiful textures

I keep a folder of beta instruments that sounded like trouble, and this week Thicket from zc devices just barged into it. It is a polyphonic node-based modular synth, and it might be the most fun I have had with a new instrument in a while.

The pitch is simple: you get 50 nodes, everything from a sub engine with waveshaping and a sub-octave, to a three-head tape echo with spring reverb, granular stuff, wavetable and sample playback, filters, distortion and modulation FX. You wire them up in one visual editor, but unlike most modular toys that make you choose between chaos and playability, this one plays like an actual instrument.

The part that got me: effects can run per note instead of on the summed mix. So each note can have its own filter movement or distortion before everything hits a shared delay. For industrial textures that is a goldmine. Run a dark drone through it, give the high notes their own crushed reverb while the lows stay clean, and suddenly you have a soundstage instead of a wall of noise.

The modulation goes deep too. Envelopes, LFOs, sequencers and followers can modulate each other, and there is proper MPE support, so per-note pressure, slide and pitch are all routable. You can load your own samples and wavetables, and it lets you morph between up to five wavetables at once. Four assignable macros plus some auto-generated ones (Tone, Space, Drive) for when you just want to grab something and make it hurt without rewiring the whole patch.

Honest caveats: this is a beta, currently at v0.8.3, so expect some quirks. It is free during the open beta, which runs until November 8 2026, but you get the license by signing up for the mailing list. Formats are VST3 and CLAP on Windows 10+, macOS 13+ (Intel and Apple Silicon), and Linux, plus AU on macOS.

Price: free during the open beta (until Nov 8 2026, license via mailing-list signup)

Product page: https://zcdevices.com