Nikolator

Instead of using a conventional oscillator, the sound is generated by modelling the process of a Tesla coil itself. The interrupter drives the resonant circuit, the discharge grows, energy is transferred into the air, and this becomes the sound you hear.

I wanted to make the coil itself playable as an instrument, rather than simply reproduce the sound of recorded Tesla coil discharges.

Features

• Physical model of a musical Tesla coil
• Monophonic and polyphonic modes
• Voltage, current and discharge controls
• Adjustable arc length, branching and channel behaviour
• Drive envelope
• 4 × 6 modulation matrix
• Paraphonic valve low pass filter
• 22 factory presets, with support for creating and saving your own presets
• MIDI velocity, pitch bend, modulation wheel and sustain pedal, with assignable modulation routing
• English and Japanese interface

Formats

macOS

Standalone AU VST3

Intel and Apple Silicon supported.

Windows

VST3

Windows builds are currently unsigned. Windows may show a SmartScreen warning when running the installer for the first time.

Nikolator performs the physical simulation internally at a much higher rate than the audio sample rate, so it uses more CPU than my usual synthesizers.

Apple Silicon is recommended, but it also runs on Intel Macs and Windows PCs.

Manual

https://hugelton.com/docs/Nikolator/en.html

Notice: Generative AI (Claude and Codex) was used for coding assistance and running the testing pipeline. Sound design, visual design, and all graphical assets were created by the developer.