Rate Hike — Clockable Burst & Irregular Rhythm Generator

Turn regular clocks into rhythmic chaos.

Rate Hike sits between your clock and the rest of your patch, transforming predictable pulses into bursts, fills, and irregular patterns that make your system feel alive. Feed it a clock, hit trigger, and watch a single pulse become a cascade of rhythmic events.

One module, a world of rhythms.

Everything starts with four parameters: Number of Bursts, Burst Duration, Regularity, and Gate Length. Set the duration short and you get a classic burst generator — tight, rapid-fire trigger sequences perfect for drum fills and ratchets. Stretch the duration out and the rhythms start to spread, evolve, and breathe. Turn the Regularity knob and patterns shift from locked-to-the-grid precision to loose, organic timing that feels human. It’s a single, continuous range from mechanical to unpredictable — no mode switching, no menu diving.

Lock it down or let it loose.

The Strict Regularity button snaps burst spacing to precise, repeatable intervals. Strict Duration fixes the total burst length to your clock, keeping everything tightly synced. Use both and Rate Hike behaves like a disciplined utility. Use neither and it drifts beautifully off the grid. Hit Random and the module overrides your knob and CV settings with unexpected values — instant happy accidents without touching a thing.

Fully patchable.

Every knob has a dedicated CV input, so Number of Bursts, Burst Duration, Regularity, and Gate Length can all be modulated independently from external sources. Clock input keeps everything synced to your system. The manual Trigger button lets you fire bursts on demand, or patch in a trigger signal for automated control. Three outputs give you Trigger, Gate, and a Reset signal that fires at the start of each burst — ideal for resetting envelopes, sequencers, or other modules in your chain.

A module that grows with you.

Rate Hike is fully digital, and free firmware updates will bring tweaks, bug fixes, and potentially new functionality over time. The module you buy today will keep getting better.

Hand-built in Belgium.

Every Rate Hike is assembled and tested by hand in Haacht, Belgium. 

Curious what Rate Hike can do? Try the online calculator here: https://bowl-modular.com/calculator.html

Specifications

Controls

• Number of Bursts (knob)
• Burst Duration (knob)
• Regularity (knob)
• Gate Length (knob)

Buttons

• Trigger (manual burst)
• Strict Regularity (locks burst spacing to grid)
• Strict Duration (locks burst length to clock)
• Random (overrides parameters with random values)

Inputs

• Clock In
• Trigger In
• CV: Number of Bursts
• CV: Burst Duration
• CV: Regularity
• CV: Gate Length

Outputs

• Trigger Out
• Gate Out
• Reset Out (fires at start of each burst)

 Documentation

• see docs.bowl-modular.com

Software updates

• Latest version (v1.0): rate-hike-code_1.0.0.uf2