1- Studio Quality analog delay

It is often referred to analog delay as low-fi tone. It’s a mistake. While it sounds less bright than crispy analog, a pro quality analog delay must satisfy all fidelity exigence of a working musician. In the old days, you could bet there was a difference between cheap plastic analog delay pedal and big bucks studio rack. I remember a Dynacord studio analog delay —one of my fave— costed the price of 2 stratocasters ! This is what we did in the PRISONER delay : thanks to its high quality N.O.S. BBD chips, the PRISONER offers 0.3 seconds of pure hi-fi analog delay… but there’s much more…

2- Dry guitar tone when the effect is on

As you must know, when you stomp on a delay box, you hear the wet AND the dry guitar tone. What you absolutely should know is that in digital delay, even the DRY tone is digitalized, which means that how good the delay is, the dry tone which mixes with it is lousy. Try your main digital squeeze with all delay down and compare it with your original guitar tone. You will see what I mean. Of course, no such thing with the PRISONER : the dry tone in the mix is exactly your guitar tone. Believe me, this makes a huge difference and this is part of why we still want analog delay in our computerized world.

3- Modulation !!!!

This is the PRISONER forte. When meeting Steve Morse for the MERCER BOX 2, I noticed he was using an old digitech rack crap. I asked him why, the answer was clear : modulation delay. Having your echoes mixing with your —good— dry tone and then going into chorus gives you a 3D tone no other effect can give you in monophony. And analog pro tone completes this picture for total heaven.

4- Magic Effect level knob

Just like in the MEISTERSINGER,  crazy tones can be musical thanks to this magic knob . Adjust your most out-of-this-world fave setting and then use it with parsimony with the EFFECT LEVEL knob to achieve tonal expertise.

5-Video demo

The post Prisoner appeared first on Jacques Stompboxes.

1 – The flanging effect
It is not quite clear who invented the word flange for this wonderful effect. Peter Sellers during the Goon show or Lennon at the BBC recording ?  The effect itself was invented by BBC sound masters who put their greasy fingers on the rim ( flange ) of one of the tape reels of the simultaneous tape decks playing the same recording. This resulted to a sweeping effect we all know and adore. Thanks again to all these great guys and girl.

2 – BBD chip
Once again, the superiority of analog delay chips to produce this time based effect is easy to prove : the BBD chip retains the sounds in its guts of caps and resistors much more naturally than any coding digital chip that have to translate it in computer language.
Just observe the right return to vinyl recording in hifi these days and you’ll understand why analog will always sounds better than digital encoding, no matter how many Hz and bits you will align in our musician front.
You can see on the picture the vintage mutron that has inspired me all along this creation process of a holy grail flanger, not counting how hard it was to find it on the vintage market !

3 – The J.S.Bach effect
Nevertheless, you will still have to inbreathe musicality to sound circuitry whatever electronic base you put in an effect. This is performed only by trying and listening.
ALL components affects the way your signal is processed and it’s only when you explore all possibilities BY EAR that you reach the supreme goal : Great Music Tone.
This is what I did with the KAPELLMEISTER, sparing no effort in choosing all components in the signal path in order to achieve a standard.

4 – And now, let’s crank this amp up !
During all these tests, our beloved KAPELLMEISTER was tested both with great clean tube amps ( ’65 deluxe reverb , Hiwatt Custom 100 heads, etc…) AND raging overdriven legendary amps ( ’68 Marshall plexi, JMI top boost Vox ac30, etc….), because it is a very crucial point on a flanger.
Good flangers must sound good with distortion, letting you enhance your soli with swirling rotating effect, a la EVH.
And the KAPELLMEISTER excels in this exercise. Satisfaction guaranteed.

5 – Audio/Video demo

The post Kapellmeister appeared first on Jacques Stompboxes.

-Best possible circuit geometry

-Selected High-Quality components only

The Gleen Gould movie: Glenn Gould and a man, certainly a musicologue, are in a black and white studio. Glenn Gould is at the piano, and starts playing with incredible maestria. The other man, striked by such artistic technique, just says: -« Meistersinger ? »
Glenn Gould turns his head toward the man, and seems to notice his presence for the first time. While going on playing in an inexorable beauty, he just answers:
-« What else? »

The MEISTERSINGER is an hommage to the best analog chorus made in the past .
First the TC electronic chorus/flanger , from which the Meister took its inspiration for super-silent operation AND great, pure and professionnal chorusing, while offering a wider frequency range signal than its scandinavian ancester. Then Boss/Roland of course, which sort of invented it, granted us with such wonderful effect as, CE1, CE2, Dimension D, Dimension C and my favorite ever, included in this obscure SH09 string keyboard I already covered on my site. CORON too, with its incredibly cheap looking plastic wonder and last but not least the great EH Small Clone.

Troy Van Leeuwen and his Meistersinger

But the MEISTERSINGER is not a model: it is a true ANALOG delay chips chorus , like they were. It is no imitation, but the real thing. You can count on the fingers of Django Reinhardt the other real analog chorus on the market today.
The reasons why analog chorus , or any analog time based effect, sounds better than digital are numerous, But the main one to me is that the detuned tone produced to be mixed with the original, is not exactly the same than the original .
Just like would be another guitarist playing along with you :

French guitarist Jean-Louis Aubert pedalboard during Les Insus tour

1 – THE INVISIBLE COMPANION
Chorus was invented to make believe you are not alone. It mimes two musician playing the same thing at the same time, thus enriching tone like in a choir. Most digital chorus tends, in this process, to kill punch and dynamics, an even more obvious defect with electric guitar. The model processors are plagued with this same problem, because of the same difficulty for digital encoding to transmit the dynamics of your playing in real time.

 2 – THE DROP ZONE
It is quite strange nobody ever evokes this simple strategy. When you manipulate hand-tweakable chorus effects ( like the old MXR rack or ADA pitchtraq) you notice a very obvious matter: c horus effect sounds twice better with a negative detune than a positive one. The reason could be a deeper body of the resulting mix or a more complicated comb hamronics effect. Anyway this option was chosen for the MEISTERSINGER, which fears no one for the best chorus tone ever. No kidding.

GNO‘s Chris Godin : « The Meister is so good I can eat it. »3 – VIDEO DEMO

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