That TG thing looks really cool, esp the line input.

When I was reprocessing a vocal last night I ran it back through a 1073-style preamp at line level on the lower impedence setting. It helped EQ’d and saturate the track a hair and made it sound more ‘vintage’ without congesting the voice, which isn’t always easy. Even with everything else going on (1176, la2a, pultec, graphic eq, tape sim all doing a little) I liked the effect.

I could see doing that with pretty much everything.

Kniferide wrote: Mon Jan 13, 2025 9:39 am

bassdriver wrote: Mon Jan 13, 2025 8:51 am

Kniferide wrote: Sun Jan 12, 2025 11:32 pm

we a have a Grace 103 at work. It sounds good, extremely neutral but really clean, but the build quality feels really plasticy and cheap. I was surprised buy it.

Oh, I meant the Chandler preamp. Not so plasticy but in the same (crazy) price range!

It is getting wild what people are willing to pay for a single channel for Mic Preamp. They have really successfully marketed to people that there is some sort of unobtainable magic in simple small amplifier stages these days. Especially when I see some IC OpAmp design going for like 1800 bones. You look at it and 90% of the schematic is just the Texas Instruments basic implementation example from the spec sheet. I've gotten into my weirder preamp solutions like my Modified Shure things and old tube PA gear lately cause at least it sounds different than just quiet and clean.

I wasn’t aware of all that audiophile stuff until we recorded at the local university‘s studio a couple of years ago. Grace, Chandler, Strauss Elektroakustik monitors that cost as much as a new small car….

llllllllllllllllllll wrote: Mon Jan 13, 2025 11:51 am That TG thing looks really cool, esp the line input.

When I was reprocessing a vocal last night I ran it back through a 1073-style preamp at line level on the lower impedence setting. It helped EQ’d and saturate the track a hair and made it sound more ‘vintage’ without congesting the voice, which isn’t always easy. Even with everything else going on (1176, la2a, pultec, graphic eq, tape sim all doing a little) I liked the effect.

I could see doing that with pretty much everything.

Lately I’ve recorded a lot of guitars and bass directly with amp sim plugins, and yes it’s nice to just plug into that preamp instead of setting up DI boxes. Sounds great.

So I've got this harebrained idea for a slicer-style tremolo pedal that uses a pulse-width modulated oscillator to key the tremolo effect.

The "Slicer" is a classic Boss pedal that acts like a keyed gate effect. It cuts the signal on and off at a regular interval according to the knob settings.

Think of the bass solo in Pink Floyd's "One Of These Days," or the rhythm guitar in The Smiths' "How Soon Is Now?"

The difference that would make my effect special, is that both the frequency and the width of the duty cycles of the PWM oscillator can be controllable on the fly, by means of a treadle. The idea is that while playing, you can use a wah-wah style foot control to either speed up and slow down the rate of the tremolo, and/or the width of the pulses. Maybe it could have two separate treadles to control the speed and the on-off ratio, or it could have some type of foot actuated joystick control that would allow the player to control both simultaneously by tilting the foot around the X-Y axes.

I already have circuits for controlling the frequency and the duty cycles of the PWM oscillator. Right now I'm trying to work out the details of how to make it attenuate the audio signal.

IIRC, there were some fender treadle effect pedals from the 70s that had both heel-toe and side-side control. A fuzz/wah and a volume/tone maybe?

That would probably be an ideal setup for what you're describing.

I don't want to shit on anyone's DIY projects. That is not my intent. Go and build away!

However, this is currently very possible and easy with Helix/HX Stomp. I know this is the anthesis of a DIY project, but if you wanted to try the idea before you built, there is a straightforward way.

benadrian wrote: Fri Jan 17, 2025 3:12 pm I don't want to shit on anyone's DIY projects. That is not my intent. Go and build away!

However, this is currently very possible and easy with Helix/HX Stomp. I know this is the anthesis of a DIY project, but if you wanted to try the idea before you built, there is a straightforward way.

Is this the device to which you're referring?
I'm not seeing a treadle.

some models have a built in expression pedal, the stomp can accept 1 or 2 external ones.

mdc wrote: Sun Jan 19, 2025 7:59 am some models have a built in expression pedal, the stomp can accept 1 or 2 external ones.

Exactly. You can plug in two wxternal expression pedals to this. You'll need a TRS to dual TS adapter cable, I believe... and the expression pedals, of course.
https://line6.com/media/ips/uploads/mon ... e7dfa1.png

The Helix and Helix LT have a built in pedal, and the ability to add mode. When I'm doing my imitation Fripp/Eno, I use the big Helix with two extra expression pedals for a total of three.