Just doing an informal survey with any VCO junkies out there.
Out of all the analog VCOs you have played with (not just Eurorack) what are some of your favorite and unique waveforms you have come across?
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Pretty sure my favorite waveforms are coming from digital oscillators. Mannequins Mangrove’s formant oscillator, and Morphing Terrarium’s wavetable oscillator are my picks. I also use single cycle waveforms from AKWF in ER-301.
But wavetables + waveshaping by far feels like the most flexible oscillator approach to me.
Mangrove is analog. It is basically just a Maths or Befaco Rampage in loop mode (i.e. Serge slew circuit) so that you can morph between triangle and saw/ramp.
There are infinite possibilities with digital VCOs but I am specifically interested in favorite analog ones.
With analog implemtation it is not just about the raw waveform cycle but also how it reacts to FM/PWM or blends with other timbres.
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My favourite is the sine wave. I love all flavours of sine, digital or analog. Digital for ultra clean precision, and analog for the subtle harmonics it adds.
I have a rubicon. I regularly feed a sine all kinds of frequency modulation: through zero, non-through zero, both… I also recently added a ufold to the equation. One trick I learned: adding extremely short bursts of fm from a noise source (pink noise especially) on the attack of a kick drum patch makes for an organic ‘puffy’ sort of kick. It adds much more to the sound than just a click. Since the Rubicon has a built-in VCA, it does this really well.
On another note… maybe I’m missing something, but I do wish there was more in the way of additive sine synthesis in eurorack. I’m thinking along the lines of NI’s razor. It would be awesome to select/modulate an array of chosen harmonics. Does that make sense? I suppose one day I’ll have a huge array of VCOs to play with… 
My favorite by far is the timbre-section of the Verbos Complex Oscillator. It’s not so much wavefolding (although there is some of that in there) as blending of different harmonics and it just sounds wonderfully fuzzy and beautiful. However, I’d say that the main point of attraction there is not so much that any one of the waveshapes sounds great, it’s more that literally any setting to the whole section sounds good and modulating between them just blends between many beautiful timbres. Very highly recommended.
I have a soft spot for the “sharktooth” on a Minimoog. Not the most amazing or rich sound, but identifiable, and very practical musically - easy to fit into other things.
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Sine. I absolutely love the tzfm sine on sine stuff i get from dixie/rubi. Ive often thought about how i would love a smaller version, with both oscillators under 1 panel, keeping the tzfm section, soft sync, and sine waveforms only.
I like the idea harmonic sine oscillators, additive thinking
I also love what i hear from the sine shaping output on Analogue Systems rs95e, whatever is going on there seems special
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Make Noise STO is interesting for this, it’s got some subtle-but-audibly-changing waveforms.
For bass I traditionally use a heavily filtered pulse wave because I feel like I have such specific control over the harmonics in the sound. I’d love similar controls but getting away from the “square-y” timbre.
I adore my Yamaha CS-60. It never ceases to amaze me.
Make Noise DPO with its wavefolder and waveshaper, if that counts! 
The sawtooth on the Yamaha CS-80 was very nice. By setting the two octave switches the same on both channels with a small amount of detuning on one of the channels, the sound was incredibly close to the string sounds that Stevie Wonder had from the GX-1 on songs like Village Ghetto Land and Pastime Paradise.
Rolands “hollow” square (on SH-101 and several others) is very unique and probably my favorite of all waveforms.
Also, its pwm sounds lush and almost choruslike where the pulse wave/pwm on most other synths/modules quickly gets too “constrained” or “strangled” sounding for my taste.
MS20 sawtooth
Hi…i am a new user here. As per my knowledge adding extremely short bursts of fm from a noise source on the attack of a kick drum patch makes for an organic ‘puffy’ sort of kick. It adds much more to the sound than just a click. Since the Rubicon has a built-in VCA, it does this really well.
my favourite is a standard oscillator, and I feed the main four into a mixer module, and sometimes patch the filtered wave back in. The output usually goes to the filter but I have been experimenting with buchla style eurorack for a while now and it can occasionally sound really satisfying. Usually not.
But I have been considering for a long time combining my mixer and basic oscillator into a module #feature-request It would be super simple and would love to see it from you guys!
I like to patch two audio sources into the planar in polar mode and then take out xy. adds a nice harmonic to anything VCO-related
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this isn’t exactly a waveform as it is more of a module, but I like the Pittsburgh modular Lifeforms Primary. It has its limitations though.
@Danjel I like a couple. One is more of an effect, but pairs nicely with a Dixie. It goes sample by sample, using the current voltage to pan the audio left and right— but at audio rates. Very simple, but sounds cool.
I also like to put a hi-def recording of the electrical pulses that cause a heartbeat into a wave table. The bpm of the heart is fed through a live monitor and then is changed into a v/oct format for a cool fluctuating baseline. At least, that’s how I use it. It can oscillate at any speed you tell it to.
@Steve-the-player
I would love to see some of these—what modules do you use for these, and where can I get one? What companies are that gloriously bizarre?
@squire80513 I have a friend who made it for me. I run it into the 4ms SWN along with other interesting bodily sounds (contact mike on throat while swallowing, burping, etc) I have absolutely no practical use for it. The stereo effect is a concept I would like to try, and I have manually (painfully!) simulated it in a DAW, but I have vowed to never do that again, seeing as I took it sample-by-sample. Would love to see an actual module that could do this.