the twisted world of guitar pedals III

According to urban legends, the Inuit have more than a dozen words for one and the same thing: snow. But forget that, it’s nothing, really. The ambitious modern guitarist is guaranteed to know a multiple of different words for one and the very same phenomenon: distortion. Seriously, guys, who comes up with terms like “clean distortion” or “transparent overdrive”? The other day, I was searching the online store of my trusted dealer for distortion pedals and got 632 hits.

Anyway, somewhere in the sheer mass of pedals and terminology, the really interesting concepts and devices are lurking. And from my humble explorations in the twisted world of guitar pedals, I mostly found them in the realm of boutique manufacturers. Small companies that have often gained a large following among guitarists and are looking for new approaches and distinctive sounds that cannot be found in the mass-produced products of the big manufacturers.

They not only experiment with new ideas and designs that larger companies may overlook, but also take the risk of being successful with niche products. They skillfully combine analog and digital technology to reinterpret classic effects or bring entirely new concepts to the table. You can literally tell that many of these companies are run by musicians who know the needs and wishes of guitarists or just are willing to work closely with customers to develop very individual or extraordinary pedals.

For me personally, some of these boutique devices and manufacturers are a true source of inspiration, whether as a musician or plugin designer. And I can only hope that they continue on their chosen path, survive difficult economic times, and above all, don’t get swallowed up by the big boys.

 

the twisted world of guitar pedals I

the twisted world of guitar pedals II

ThrillseekerLA mkII released

ThrillseekerLA mkII – bringing mojo back

ThrillseekerLA is an optical stereo compressor optimized for gentle mix bus coloring. It combines smoothest optical compression with vibrant coloration options that deliver a unique box tone in their own right, including thrilling bass and elegant top end void of any harshness in the mids. Its compression not only glues things together effortlessly but also enhances the stereo image by increasing depth and dimension.

10 years after – new in version 2:

• Technical redesign with advanced opto cell emulation
• Simplified gainstaging including automatic output gain compensation
• Streamlined coloring options: Interstage, Tube and Loudness
• New compress/limit option and reworked sidechain filtering

The mkII update is available for Windows VST in 32 and 64bit as freeware. Download your copy here.

Related Links:

• • the beauty of opto-electrical compression – volume 2

some FlavourMTC coverage from the net

Short review from Bedroom Producers Blog – Variety Of Sound Releases FREE FlavourMTC Passive Equalizer Plugin:

Variety of Sound is one of the legendary old-school freeware VST plugin developers, providing top-tier audio software that easily rivals the quality of paid plugins. Their incredible FerricTDS mkII is still my favorite tape saturation plugin.

If you’re looking for mixing and mastering software with a taste of analog hardware, I highly recommend checking out Variety of Sound’s plugins. It is one of the best freeware plugin collections for Windows-based music producers.

Thread over there at gearslutz gearspace –  A completely new plugin after a long streak of redesigned classics:

This sounds like analogue gear. Incredible.

… it’s a big fat lump of ‘ashish dissolved in a bucket filled with two parts honey and one part roasted sesame on a warm Himalayan afternoon. Dip yer finger, don’t forget to lick it and soon not only sesame opens …

the twisted world of guitar pedals II

Meanwhile I had the opportunity to put my hands on some Fairfield Circuitry effect pedal stuff mentioned earlier here and the “Meet Maude” analog BBD delay was right here on my desk for a deeper inspection. My actual experience was a rather mixed one.

Focusing on a rather dark and LoFi sound quality on the one hand plus a rather simplistic feature set concept wise on the other, they do not appear to be very flexible in practise and this at a rather steep price point. They appear to be very noisy featuring all kinds of artifacts even when integrated to the mixing desk via reamping. One may call this the feature itself but at the end it makes it a one-trick pony. If you need exactly that, here you have it but you get nothing beyond that. To me this trade off was too big and so I send it back.

However, I found their nifty low pass gate implementation (very prominently featured within their “Shallow Water”) that much unique and interesting that I replicated it as a low pass filter alternative in software and to have it available e.g. for filtering delay lines in my productions. The “Shallow Water” box made me almost pull the trigger but all in all I think this stuff seems to be a little bit over-hyped thanks to the interwebs. This pretty much sums it up for now, end of this affair.

Timeline & BigSky – The new dust collectors?

Going into the exact opposite direction might be a funny idea and so I grabbed some Strymon stuff which aims to be the jack of all trades at least regarding digital delay and reverb in a tiny stomp box aka desktop package. To be continued …

Further readings about BBD delays:

• the Ibanez AD202 analog delay
• the Dynacord VRS-23 analog delay

the twisted world of guitar pedals I

Quite recently I had a closer look into the vast amount of (guitar) effect pedals out there. Most are already DSP based which surprised me a little bit since I still ecpected more discrete analog designs after all. While looking for some neat real analog BBD delay I finally stumbled across Fairfield Circuitry’s “Meet Maude” which got me intrigued, having a rather rough look&feel at first sight but some very delicate implementation details under the hood.

Their delay modulation circuit has some randomness build in and also there is a compression circuit in the feedback loop – both designs I’ve also choosen for NastyDLA and which makes a big impact on the overall sound for granted. But the real highlight is the VCF in the delay feedback path which actually appears to be a low-pass gate – a quite unique design and soundwise also different but appealing in its very own regard.

They employed very similar concepts to their vibrato/chorus box “Shallow Water” featuring also random delay modulation and a low pass gate but this time a little bit more prominent on the face plate. On top, their JFET op-amp adds some serious grit to any kind of input signal. All in all, I did not expect such a bold but niche product to exist. If I ever will own such a thingy, there will be a much more detailed review here for sure.

42 Audio Illusions & Phenomena

In a comprehensive series of five YouTube videos, Casey Connor provided an awesome overview and demonstration of 42 (!) different psychoacoustic effects. Watching and hearing (headphones required) not only is so much entertaining and educational but also provides some deep insights why we all do not hear in the exact same way. Relevant for all of us in the audio domain whether it is sound design, mixing, mastering or development. Highly recommended!

The Korg SDD-3000 – perfect for LoFi?

By accident, I recently stumbled upon the UAD Korg SDD-3000 digital delay version. When I noticed that they modelled also its amplifiers as well as the 13bit converters they immediately got my attention. Having also high- and low-pass filters on board, this could easily double as a great lofi device – so lets have a closer look.

As in the original hardware, the device offers several gain stage adjustments for both input and ouptut, intended to match different instrument or line level signals. These amplifiers are always in, no matter if the BYPASS switch is activated or not. Interestingly, UA also integrated this in its “Unison” interface feature as an preamp option.

Depending on how hard the input gain is driven, quite heavy distortion and saturation effects can occur. As soon as the Bypass is deactivated, the effect signal path containing the 13bit converted and HP/LP filtered signal can be dialed in with the LEVEL BALANCE. If this balance is now set to EFFECT only or just the WET SOLO option has been turned on (plus avoiding any amounts of feedback in this case) the device now offers a pretty much nicely degraded signal path for any sort of creative effects. Depending on the actual settings one can dial in now some really creamy or even gritty effects. Be aware, that this signal path contains an additional delay according to the DELAY TIME setting, of course.

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The analysis charts are showing – from left to right – the basic frequency response (in bypass mode), some example harmonic distortions when hitting the input gain quite hard and the filtered effect signal path frequency response according to the UI settings above. The slight frequency bump on the right side of the charts might be caused by the plugin oversampling filters – the original hardware does not show this and its spectrum ends somewhere around 17kHz.

As in the original hardware, all settings are just within limited ranges and so it is not that flexible in general. However, soundwise its pretty much awesome. Oh and by the way, it also doubles as a simple but impressive delay 😉

utilizing early reflections in a production

A quite often underestimated or even forgotten production technique is to take advantage of artificial early reflections which could be added somewhere during the mixing process. Without inserting any fully fledged reverberation at all, applying such techniques allows to dramatically increase stereo width and depth perception as well as a way better instrument localization even in a busy mix. Creating density is not the goal here but the opposite is the name of the game: achieving a clear and intelligible mix.

In a simple case, one can place a short and plain delay (a slap-back echo) on a track and properly place it in the stereo field – maybe on the opposite side of the source but that’s just an example. More sophisticated tap delays could be used to create a sort of room experience and some reverberators are allowing to disable the late reverb diffusion and just to use their early reflection generation. There are no restrictions in general – allowed is what gets the job done in that specific mixing situation.

is seeing believing?

The McGurk effect is a compelling demonstration of how we all use visual speech information. The effect shows that we can’t help but integrate visual speech into what we ‘hear’.

This (hopefully) makes you rethink about mixing “visually”.

(thanks to Seppes Santens)

freeware tip: Phazor VST audio effect by Adam Szabo

Phazor is a free effect plugin, which emulates the phaser effect found in the Virus synthesizers, which helped make its characteristic sound. A lot of time was devoted to make it sound very close to the original and every control has been carefully adjusted to behave just like the phaser from the Virus. […]

Read more detailed info about it on his website www.adamszabo.com – there is a nice audio comparison as well. The download is available there for Win32 only.