Tags: Reverb effects units

Notes: Gorgeous analogue goodness in this all-rounder, featuring overdrive, filter, envelope, LFO and a nice retro spring reverb among others processing options. Tons of character.

Supplier's notes:
Today's digital effects and plug-ins can create almost perfect room simulations. However, when it comes to characteristic and charismatic reverb, analogue effect-processors are yet to beat. The reverberating sound of a spring is so lively and unique that its sound is almost impossible to recreate in the digital domain. In addition to this, Retroverb Lancet is not just a spring reverberation system - it is an analogue multi-effects-processor. It offers overdrive, filtering, VCA, envelope and LFO to manipulate the spring sound and create different sounds like auto-wah, tremolo, distortion, delay, gater and of course reverb.

The typical spring reverb sound is generated by a Belton/Accutronics type 4 spring tank with 3 individual springs. It can be placed pre or post the VCF/VCA section and equalized by the Tone parameter.

The Crash function generates the popular thunder effect that occurs when kicking an amplifier with spring tank. You don't have to kick Retroverb Lancet you simply can achieve this effect by pressing the Crash button. It also can be triggered by a Gate voltage.

The multimode filter works as lowpass or highpass with a slope of 24 dB per octave or as bandpass with 12 dB per octave. It is followed by a voltage controlled amplifier. The filter and amplifier can be modulated individually by different sources.

The Retroverb Lancet offers 3 internal modulationGorgeous analogue goodness
in this all-rounder, featuring overdrive, filter, envelope, LFO and a nice retro spring reverb among others processing options. Tons of character. sources:

Envelope follower: the envelope follower converts the amplitude characteristic of the audio input signal into a control voltage.
Envelope generator: the envelope generator can be triggered by the input signal itself, a second audio signal or a gate voltage. Depending on the trigger source it works as Attack-Decay or as Attack-Sustain-Release envelope.
LFO: the LFO offers saw up and saw down, square, sine as well as sample&hold. Additionally it can use the envelope generators settings as waveform. It can oscillate freely or reset by different trigger sources.

The Retroverb Lancet also offers a CV/Pedal input which can be feed by external control voltages or can be used with expression pedals.

Notes: BAM is a stereo reverb processor inspired by the late 70s / early 80s digital reverberator units.These units are sought after by sound engineers, producers and musicians for their grainy, warm and musical reverberations.

The audio signal was severely high-cut filtered (10 kHz was standard at that time) because of the limited sample clock. Some units used 12 bit gain stepping converters to achieve a 15 bit resolution and others used the first 16 bit converters. Then the samples were digitally processed through a 16 to 20 bit fixed-point CPU with limited memory. The algorithms had to be simple but efficient to create the most musical and versatile reverberation from these limitations. And the hardware itself added grain and warmness to the sound.

The technology used in BAM is very close to the one used in these early digital reverberator units : 16 bit converters, 20 bit fixed-point processing, analog filtering and even an input transformer transient simulator. Some of the 7 reverb algorithms are influenced by the early structures, and some are brand new.

BAM is a very musical and unique reverb processor. It combines the sound quality of a vintage reverb processor with the playability of a desktop effect in a compact format with MIDI control and 36 user presets.

Notes: *** NO POWER SUPPLY INCLUDED - USES GENERIC 12VAC ADAPTER ***

Basically, the Ekdahl Moisturizer is a spring reverb where the springs are exposed so they can be played/hit/fiddled with. As well as being capable of creating sound in itself, you can of course also play sound through the springs like a regular spring reverb - this makes for happy-fun-time finger-modulation of the reverb on whatever audio that's going through it. On top of this there's an analog multimode filter that can be used to attenuate or exaggerate certain frequencies in the sound, this is real handy while playing the springs as you can - for instance - cut all the highs and just make thunderous doomy sounds or do the opposite; cut all the lows and make that ear piercing high frequency special love. Also, it incorporates an LFO that's internally routable to the filter and that also has some external routing-stuff. The Ekdahl Moisturizer has tons of CV / Expression pedal options on the back for even more hillarious moments. The Moisturizer is a mono unit.

The Moisturizer was developed with the help of Jason Willett (Half Japanese, Leperchaun Catering), Martin Schmidt (Matmos, Instant Coffee), Joshua Atkins (Polygons, Major Powers), mom & dad and many more.

The Ekdahl Moisturizer contains exactly:
Preamp (up to 10 times gain)
Reverb
Reverb / Preamp wet/dry crossfader (Knob & CV/EP controllable)
State variable filter with
Lowpass/Bandpass/Highpass seamless crossover (Knob, CV/EP & LFO controllable)
Cutoff (Knob, CV/EP & LFO controllable)
Resonance (WITHOUT resonance limiter)
LFO with
Speed control (Knob & CV/EP controllable)
Square / Triangle crossover
External output with output amplitude knob
Filter / No filter wet/dry crossfader (Knob & CV/EP controllable)

The preamp section is designed for a max of 10 times gain, this to accomodate for low level output instruments such as guitars etc. The reverb tank has normal reverb signal gain on it, meaning that if you hit the springs hard they'll distort like crap which is real nice, if you hit them softly the sound won't be distorted.

The filter in the Ekdahl Moisturizer is abrasive, the fact that it doesn't have any resonance limiting makes it possible to get the filter to sound *really* bubbly & metallic (way more then any filter i've ever heard), but it's also of course capable of sounding completely "normal" - it all depends on the amount of resonance and/or gain. The fact that you can seamlessly fade inbetween lowpass, bandpass or highpass filter (or lowpass+bandpass and highpass+bandpass) makes the unit pretty damn versatile and by using the wet/dry filter/no filter crossfader there's some neat shit that can be done too. Now it should be said that due to the fact that there's no resonance limiter, if using very high gain, with high resonance and turning the cutoff frequency very high the filter might cut out - not to worry, just turn the cutoff back a bit and the filter pops in again. This happens because the filter gets overloaded and can be avoided with a resonance limiter, however if i had one of those all the super-awesome bounce would be gone and it'd sound like all the other filter out there.

The Ekdahl moisturizer has six CV/Expression pedal related jacks on the back, one of them is a LFO output so you can control other shit with The Moisturizer's LFO. All the other jacks are inputs and takes either CV or Expression pedal, they are: Reverb Mixture, VCF Cutoff, VCF Filter Mode (LP/BP/HP), Filter Mixture and LFO Speed.