This is the first vactrol based module in the A-100 system. A vactrol is a combination of a light depending resistor (LDR) and a LED (light emitting diode) both put into a small light-proof case. For more general details about vactrols please look at the Vactrol Basics page information. Increasing the LED brightness causes a decrease of the LDR resistance (e.g. the light controlled voltage module A-179 is an application of a LDR).
This effect can be used in circuits that require variable resistors to obtain the desired function (e.g. VCFs, VCAs, VC phasers, VC trigger delays, VC slew limiters, VC Envelope Generators, VC LFOs, VCOs and many more).
Module A-101-1 is a special multitype filter based on an idea by Nyle A. Steiner (published in Electronic Design, issue 25, December 1974, page 96 ff). The circuit uses the standard non-inverting amplifier filter design. Different filter types (low pass / LP, band pass / BP, high pass / HP) are realized by injecting the audio signal into different points of the circuit and using a common output for all filter types.
One may feed three different audio signals into the filter simultaneously. Each signal is filtered correspondingly (LP resp. BP resp. HP) and the sum of the three filtered signals appears at the output. Of course it is possible to feed the same signal to all three inputs. In this case one obtains different combinations of LP/BP/HP according to the settings of the three input attenuators for LP/BP/HP.
Even a Notch filter is possible (not available in the original design). The filter inputs are normalled, i.e. the BP input is connected to the LP jack socket provided that no cable is plugged into the BP socket (same applies for HP/BP inputs).