BJFE / BearFoot fx Guitar Effects Community

zion wrote:Lets pool together some funds and fly him to BJ's workshop and get some sort of collaboration going..

That is funny

....and, just to complete the ADT/flanging/phasing/chorus idea...I reckon that the pedal should also include the reverb part of the STEED approach (as outlined above) to complete all the features you would ever want from a serious modulation device. If not, there must be some way that you can send the signal to an external reverb device to complete the STEED circuit.

mrpicard wrote:....and, just to complete the ADT/flanging/phasing/chorus idea...I reckon that the pedal should also include the reverb part of the STEED approach (as outlined above) to complete all the features you would ever want from a serious modulation device. If not, there must be some way that you can send the signal to an external reverb device to complete the STEED circuit.

Mr Picard you are speaking Star Trek to me...

mrpicard wrote:....and, just to complete the ADT/flanging/phasing/chorus idea...I reckon that the pedal should also include the reverb part of the STEED approach (as outlined above) to complete all the features you would ever want from a serious modulation device. If not, there must be some way that you can send the signal to an external reverb device to complete the STEED circuit.

well with the reverb it probably wouldnt fit in the little boxes anymore

I remember when I 'invented/discovered' ADT and Flanging - scared the crap out of me !!!!

once upon a time a few lifetimes ago in my younger days,,, I was a radio DJ and loved writing and producing commercials of which I did several thousand over a few years.... today its all done digitally but this was the tapedecks and razorblades 80s era....
one studio had three of the huge Studers I used alot and one day was mixing 2 to 1 with a shared backing track and two interlaced voices..... and during mix down bumped one of the reels and wooooooooooosh !!! its still the most scary beautiful sound I think Ive ever heard ~~~~ I played with that for a good hour , messing with the variable speed controls, speeding one up and down slightly while slowly moving the panpot on the mixer...... this is very similar to the 'Keep yourself alive' Queen track or Wars' 'Four Corner Room' ...... what the FoxRox TZF (thru zero flanger) is trying to replicate, tho I never got it to do it like that.....
I had a conversation once with Mike Fuller about making a version of his TTE that would do this...real tape flanging and ADT rotor wobble..
I used to do this alot with a Korg Stage Echo and a Teac 4 track reel to reel
And I think there is a version of the Roland tape machines that has chorus and reverb built in as well
ADT is basically what Chorusing effects are based on - time manipulation of multiple similar sources - one of my favorites is the old Boss Harmonist which slightly detunes one of the signals and 'uptunes' the other when set to unison...

anyway the key would be mastering the random delay wobble, and I think that would be great should BJ ever tackle a 'chorus' type effect.... or a Deeper Bluer Delay

I would love to see a Multi-Delay pedal. I find that I always leave on a short, analog delay to provide ambience and a digital delay for lead. It would be nice to see a dual stomp delay pedal that would have delay time and repeat on both sides as well as a 2 mix switches to control wed/dry.

Donner wrote:wooooooooooosh !!! its still the most scary beautiful sound I think Ive ever heard ~~~~ I played with that for a good hour , messing with the variable speed controls, speeding one up and down slightly while slowly moving the panpot on the mixer......

Exactly, that is why one of these pedals would be amazing. There are not many people these days that know what true tape-based ADT/Flanging/Phasing/Chorusing sounds like. It is definitely a lost sound and it would be great to have it back.

Donner wrote:I had a conversation once with Mike Fuller about making a version of his TTE that would do this...real tape flanging and ADT rotor wobble..

That is funny, so did I !!!! I wonder why he will not build me one..

Donner wrote:ADT is basically what Chorusing effects are based on

Exactly

Donner wrote:Anyway the key would be mastering the random delay wobble, and I think that would be great should BJ ever tackle a 'chorus' type effect.... or a Deeper Bluer Delay

Well, BJ wanted a challenge and now he has one

Mr. Picard, a quick question about the ADT thing... do you understand how the effect it produces is different than the effect that's produced with a pedal modulation? I might be a little slow today, but I can't quite figure out how a second, delayed signal from a tape would end up being different (in principle) than one from a delay chip (analog or digital)... I imagine there would be tonal differences just from working directly with tape, but as far as the effect itself goes, wouldn't one have to use something other than tape to get it into a stompbox anyway?

Or is the difference that there was some manual control over the changing delay times, and the human element just makes things sound more natural than the oscillator in a chorus type pedal? I'd think that exactly copying this wouldn't be very easy, but a second low frequency oscilator to change the rate (or depth) of first might help get a little closer? Or some kind of lag processor stolen from synthy stuff to try and get a less regular waveform on the oscillator? I saw a pseudorandom LFO design somewhere that migh get closer to the effect?

Lots of random questions, but I tend to agree about having trouble bonding with modulation effects, and I'm trying to wrap my head around the info you posted.

Thanks for that either way!

(oops... misssed that last post)

mrpicard wrote:

Donner wrote:wooooooooooosh !!! its still the most scary beautiful sound I think Ive ever heard ~~~~ I played with that for a good hour , messing with the variable speed controls, speeding one up and down slightly while slowly moving the panpot on the mixer......

Exactly, that is why one of these pedals would be amazing. There are not many people these days that know what true tape-based ADT/Flanging/Phasing/Chorusing sounds like. It is definitely a lost sound and it would be great to have it back.

Donner wrote:I had a conversation once with Mike Fuller about making a version of his TTE that would do this...real tape flanging and ADT rotor wobble..

That is funny, so did I !!!! I wonder why he will not build me one..

Donner wrote:ADT is basically what Chorusing effects are based on

Exactly

Donner wrote:Anyway the key would be mastering the random delay wobble, and I think that would be great should BJ ever tackle a 'chorus' type effect.... or a Deeper Bluer Delay

Well, BJ wanted a challenge and now he has one

Yeah it would be very cool if Mike would make a run of those - but hes Mass Market Man and its probably not worth his time ....

but really its the sound in stereo that is so profound --- the old Ibanez Mod Delays get about as close as you can digitally - and the Tape setting with mod on the Echopark is a really good sim too...

but really I guess just two delay lines in parrallel, and one with a random modulation feature would be very close...and a touch of reverb

mills wrote:Mr. Picard, a quick question about the ADT thing... do you understand how the effect it produces is different than the effect that's produced with a pedal modulation? I might be a little slow today, but I can't quite figure out how a second, delayed signal from a tape would end up being different (in principle) than one from a delay chip (analog or digital)... I imagine there would be tonal differences just from working directly with tape, but as far as the effect itself goes, wouldn't one have to use something other than tape to get it into a stompbox anyway?

Well, it is one of those issues of "real world" vs "faked world". The original tape-based systems have a tone that is warm, organic, etc, etc, etc; the tone produced by these systems are pleasing to the ear. In the 1970s they tried to replicate flanging/phasing/chorusing by used chip-based technologies. Although they technically did the same kind of thing they did not sound as good as the original tape-based system. As a result, the flanging/phasing/chorusing is pretty sterile and it is kind of hard to find one that really does sound nice; they are hard to "bond" with. The problem is that the pedals of today are using these sterile 1970s pedals as the basis for their "new" flanging/phasing/chorusing devices and therefore they suffer from the same problems as the 1970s pedals did. Therefore, it seems to me that this is a good opportunity to go right back to the beginning and build a ADT/flanging/phasing/chorusing pedal that takes the original tape-based systems as a source of ideas and tone rather than using the 1970s chip-based pedals as the source of ideas.

mills wrote:Or is the difference that there was some manual control over the changing delay times, and the human element just makes things sound more natural than the oscillator in a chorus type pedal? I'd think that exactly copying this wouldn't be very easy, but a second low frequency oscilator to change the rate (or depth) of first might help get a little closer? Or some kind of lag processor stolen from synthy stuff to try and get a less regular waveform on the oscillator? I saw a pseudorandom LFO design somewhere that migh get closer to the effect?

That "manual/human" element is definitely a feature as well. Also the notion of "wobble", that was recently captured in the Skreddy Echo pedal. Everything in the tape-based system is terribly inaccurate. It is these inaccuracies and "problems" that add to appeal of these systems. Chip-based systems are very precise and that is probably not a good thing when really a flanging/phasing/chorusing device should actually make things more warm than sterile. So, not only is it manual control it is random things like tape wobble and the fact that you can have quite a bit of manual impact over just about everything in the effect production process. If you read above you can see that Donner spent a lot of time playing with the effect and producing all sorts of interesting things. It is very hard to do that on todays flanging/phasing/chorusing pedals when all you have is an "Intensity" and "Volume" knob.

Anyway, there are definitely a lot of things to think about. Sure, we cannot implement a tape unit into a foot pedal. However, it would be interesting to revisit ADT/flanging/phasing/chorusing foot pedal solutions by using the original tape-based solution as a source for ideas rather than using the somewhat limited 1970s devices as the source. You never know what may happen