From atomic@netcom.comMon Apr 3 13:05:51 1995 Date: Wed, 29 Mar 1995 10:47:57 -0800 (PST) From: atomic city To: Transistor Rhythm Cc: Analogue Heaven Mailing List Subject: Re: EH Transistor Rhythm writes-- > >On Tue, 28 Mar 1995, Squishy wrote: > >> I remember the other day someone was talking about EH boxes. >> I've come across a place that has and gets quite a few of >> these in every now and again. So what are the boxes of >> choice? > > >Electro-Harmonix fx are great. mike (map) got me started on them with >the small stone phase shifter. it's very ballsy as far as phase shifters I used a Small Stone for many years as a gigging bassist, along with a Bassballs envelope follower/fuzz for bass guitar. EH boxes are a lot of fun for historical reasons; they were cheaper than the competition and had many interesting ideas in them. But they were uniformly noisy as hell and very flimsy, sometimes breaking if stepped on too hard. I have a ton of literature about their line, and was loyal right up until they were driven out of business in 1982. >go. the phase shifter also comes in the bad stone flavor (which dj26 >has). as far as desired eh boxes go, i'd like to have one or two of the >following: > >small stone phase shifter >bad stone phase shifter The Bad Stone gives you more controllability than the Small Stone, which only has a rate control and a switch to vary between two kinds of phasing. Similarly, the Clone Theory chorus had a small version, the Small Clone. >electric mistress flanger Not a bad flanger for its time; Hendrix reportedly used one. You can do a lot better nowadays, with anything from the Boss BF-2 and the Ibanez pedal all the way up to the TC Electronic Godbox. >the bass and/or guitar micro synth (mike has the bass micro) These, like the X-911 from Korg, tracked pitch fiarly poorly and required a hideously careful picking style, but the noises they made were fun. >and the elusive 16 second delay. they supposedly made less than 100 of >them. surprisingly enough, i know of 4 for sale here in seattle. all of >them wanting between $600-$1200 apiece. I find this very hard to believe; the 16-second was their last really popular box, and I think they got out a lot more than 100 of them. $600 to $1200 is ridiculous; I know a guy in the UK who bought the rights to the schematics, and is making a rackmount version that you can get for under $500. I tested the prototype and liked it, but I think the modern devices like the JamMan and Echoplex Digital Pro are far better. mike PS. There were a lot of other EH boxes out there, of course: The Hog's Foot, Screaming Bird, Mole, Screaming Tree, Y Trigger, Switch Blade, Doctor Q, Hot Tubes, Polyphase, Polychorus, Ambitron, Big Muff, Little Big Muff, Linear Power Booster (1 and 2), Digital Rhythm Matrix (15, 16, and 32), Memory Man, Hot Foot, and a bunch of others I can't think of off the top of my head, to say nothing of their complete electronic drum lineup, the Space Drum, Crash Pad, Clap Track, Panic Button, Sonic Boomer, Rolling Thunder, Instant Replay, and Clockworks. :) -- mike metlay * atomic city * p. o. box 81175 * pittsburgh, pa 15217-0675 usa atomic@netcom.com * atomic-city@netcom.com * http://pd.net/atomic-city --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Tony Cappellini discusses Team Metlay's _Bandwidth_ with Mike Metlay: TC: BTW, what was it that sounded like a swarm of flies or bees on "The Hinge of Fate" ? M^2: At the very end of the song, you mean? TC: Yes. M^2: That was a TR-707 crash cymbal sampled into a Korg SDD-2000 sampling DDL and played back at greatly lowered pitch, then fed through a Lexicon LXP-5 on regenerative upward pitch shift. TC: That would have been my next guess :) From map@cs.washington.eduMon Apr 3 14:26:39 1995 Date: Mon, 3 Apr 1995 13:19:27 -0700 (PDT) From: Mike Perkowitz To: analogue heaven Subject: Re: EH > Electro-Harmonix fx are great. mike (map) got me started on them with > the small stone phase shifter. it's very ballsy as far as phase shifters > go. the phase shifter also comes in the bad stone flavor (which dj26 yeah, the small stone rules. romeo has mine right now and is adding a couple of extra knobs. :) as someone said, all it typically has is a rate knob and a 2-position "color" switch. i've heard from someone who's lined up both (was that you pete?) that the small stone and the bad stone are noticeably different in sound. the bad stone also has an additional knob. (depth?) sovtek have reissued the small stones in olive drab tank boxes. like $90 new. i dont know if they sound identical. when i get back my super small stone, i'll post a review of the 5 phasers i currently own (small stone, symetrix phase filter, boss RPH-10, wavestation A/D, and boss se-70). > the bass and/or guitar micro synth (mike has the bass micro) the bass microsynth kicks some serious ass. :) it's one of my "secret weapons". it makes a 303 sound crazy. it makes a juno sound like hendrix playing the star spangled banner. it makes a 909 kick into distortion heaven. it's a filter sweep with octave up and down, and square wave. you give the filter two cutoffs and a time and it sweeps from one to the other when it triggers (adjustable sensitivity), with adjustable attack, and resonance. serious machine. :) m PS - yes, i'm back. though i havent even begun to catch up on the probably 300-400 messages from majordomo about this list. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- The tone color you have synthesized will not be retained unless a proper writing procedure is taken on the [alpha] JUNO. The writing operation, however, inevitably erases a tone color. -- from the Roland PG-300 manual ----------------------------------------------------------------------- map@cs.washington.edu http://www.cs.washington.edu/homes/map/ mike perkowitz http://www.hyperreal.com/~tint From thudson@globalvision.netTue May 9 20:09:21 1995 Date: Tue, 9 May 95 23:06 EDT From: Tomy Hudson To: fEEd@maroon.tc.umn.edu Cc: analogue@hyperreal.com Subject: Re: Electro harmonix pedals once again >I know this has been covered before, but can someone give me a run down on >these EH pedals: > >big Muff deluxe >Multiplexor >Dr Q. (mr. q.? colonel q? curly q? I can't remeber) Having been a EH junky from way back, here's some info that might serve the archive: The Big Muff Deluxe is an AC powered version of the Big Muff with a built-in compressor. Perhaps a little less noisy than some versions of the Muff PI species (or genus?). It produces a highly distorted, very smooth sound, quite useful for things other than guitars. EH said the Big Muff was what Hendrix used to achieve that "smooth Electric Lady sound", but no book I've ever read about Hendrix' gear ever mentions it (he wasn't around to refute it). If you want the least-noisy and best built version of this, get the new one made by Sovtek. They're built like a tank and are much less noisy than the old ones. These are supposedly made in Russia at an ex-military factory using Russian military-spec discrete components. They sound as good as the original and have a street price of around $70. They also make the Small Stone phase-shifter and it sounds great too (about the same street price). The Doctor Q was a simple envelope-follower controlled band-pass filter. I seem to remember it had a switch to pass the bass frequencies (or a low pass?) so bass players could use it without thinning the sound. Another interesting one was the Electric Mistress. It was a flanger, but I believe it used a comb filter instead of delay-based flanging. I've never heard one, but many people say they sound good. This was apparently a favorite of Rick Derringer (what ever happened to him?). Guitar Player says "Perfect for Robert Frippites, the Mistress gets extremely detuned and twisted, and is probably best suited for those into weirdness for it's own sake". I want one. The Clone Theory was a SAD512-based chorusing and vibrato device. It was noisy but it a great chorusing sound, very wild non-linear sweep to the LFO. Very different than any other chorus I've heard. There was the LPB1 which was a booster that many a teen guitar-hero- wanna-be's used to fry their first guitar amp. The Bad Stone was another phase shifter, never heard it but supposedly not as good sounding as the Small Stone. The Soul Preacher and Black Finger were sustainers (compressor optimized for guitar), but I've never heard either. Supposedly The Black Finger is very noisy, the SP is supposedly the more musical of the two. The Screaming Tree and the Screaming Bird were treble boosters. The Memory Man was a SAD1024 based delay (~400ms max). The Pulsar was a tremolo with a very wide range and a staccato switch. Never heard one but many rave about them. I've always wanted to find the Talking Pedal. This wah wah inspired pedal was supposed to say "ah-ee-ii-oh-you". One I've always wanted to hear was the EH Frequency Analyzer. EH said it could "stretch your guitar neck to nine feet or shrink it to nine inches." Some say it was a only ring modulator, others say it was more, everyone agreed it was weird. EH claimed in one ad that it was used by Kraftwerk, but maybe they were just getting brazen after never hearing any complaints from Hendrix about the Big Muff. Until the Lexicon Jam Man came along, the Holy Grail of EH gear was the Digital Memory-man. Sixteen seconds of delay, with sound-on-sound and looping capabilities, affectionately known as Fripp-in-a-box. I'm surprised it took a company so long to copy it, but I'm glad it was Lexicon that did. BJ (Before JamMan) these units went for a lot of money, very few were made. For more info on EH and other vintage stomp boxes check out the June 1995 issue of Guitar Player "Stomp Box Fever." Hope this can serve as a start for the EH archive.