Category: Gear

Effects for the Fender Rhodes

I started to look at some “classic” effects that were used through out time and came up with a list. Next I need to figure out what I want sitting on my rhodes.

These seem like the most common effects:

  • Vibrato
  • Wah-Wah Pedal
  • Fuzz/Overdrive Pedal
  • Phase Shifter
  • Chorus
  • Echo/Delay
  • Ring Modulator

Vibrato:

  • Fender Amp Vibrato
  • Electro-Harmonix Wiggler

Wah-Wah Pedal:

  • Crybaby wah

Fuzz/Overdrive:

  • Tube Works Real Tube
  • Ibanez TS9
  • Throbak Overdrive Boost Pedal
  • MXR Distortion plus

Phase Shifter:

  • Electro-Harmonix Small Stone
  • MXR Phase 90

Chorus:

  • BOSS CE-1 Chorus Ensemble

Echo/Delay:

  • Roland Space Echo

Work in progress!

New Gear: Strymon BlueSky

If you love reverb as much as I do then you already know what this pedal can do. I am excited that Strymon finally had them in stock and shipped it to me in 2 days. Now time to mount it on the board and get some use out of this thing.

New Gear: Barber Tone Press

Barber Tone Press:

Barber developed a one-of-a-kind proprietary continuous “blend control” circuit, and combined it with a discrete “Class A” FET mixer circuit to allow you to continuously blend the natural signal of your carefully selected guitar with a “phase-corrected” classic compression circuit. The result? What guitar players have always wanted, unaltered attack and supernatural sustain and resonance.

Cant wait to get this mounted on my board and start taking advantage of its awesome parallel compression design.

Akai EB-16 Effects Board Notes

Took these notes from several places.

The EB16 is the optional effects board for the MPC2000(XL).

It consists of 2 multi-fx and 2 reverbs.

Multi-fx:

  • Distortion
  • 4-band filter (more like an EQ)
  • Modulation:
  • Phaser
  • Flanger
  • Chorus
  • Rotary
  • Speaker
  • Modulation/Auto Pan
  • Pitch Shifter
  • Pitch Shifter and Feedback
  • Delay/Echo: Mono L, Mono L+R, X-Over L&R, Stereo
  • Reverb:
  • Hall, Room
  • Large Hall
  • Small Hall
  • Large Room
  • Small Room
  • Gate: Gated 1, Gated 2
  • Reverse

You can freely assign the 2 multi-fx to any number of samples in a program.
Shortcomings:
The reverb is only borrowed from the associated multi-effect. That is, whatever reverd setting used in M1 is the only type of reverb used in R1. -The reverb is output in whatever output assigned to the multieffect. Like if you have M1 assigned to outputs 1/2, R1 will only output on 1/2 -Output is stereo only. Turns any mono signal into a stereo output. Related to the fact the the effects can only be assigned to stereo pair (1/2, L/R, 3/4, etc.)

Benefit:
It is a true multi-effect. While low-end outboard FX boxes (Zoom 1204, Lexicon MPX100) can only use 1 or 2 effects simultaneously, with the EB16, you can use all 5 (?) effects at the same time in the multi-effects (M1 and M2)

More details of the effects board can be found in the manual for the MPC2000XL available at Akai.

4-band filter (more like an EQ)

To make it easy for you:

Its not really what it looks like (I thought : Ok, a 4 band EQ).
Its a 4 band Filter. 1 HiPass, 2 BandPass and 1 LoPass

All filters are adjustable in frequency and volume. The bandpass filters are also got adjustable bandwidth (Q).

The frequencies of the filters are:

  • HiPass: 500Hz – 16000Hz
  • BandPass 1: 40Hz – 6300Hz
  • BandPass 2: 40Hz – 6300Hz
  • LoPass: 16Hz – 500Hz

The Volume of the filters are adjustable from -37dB (which means muted) to +12dB

The “zero” settings (I mean the settings when you dont have a difference to the unfiltered signal) are the following:

  • HiPass: 500Hz – 0dB
  • BandPass 1: frequency doesn’t matter – -37dB (muted)
  • BandPass 2: frequency doesn’t matter – -37dB (muted)
  • LoPass: 500Hz – 0dB

So if you want a pure HiPass Filter you’ll have to mute the LoPass too (set to -37).
If you want a bandpass, set one of the bandpass filters to 0dB (or above) and mute the Hi and LoPass

Try This:

Go to the “Mixer” screen (shift+7) and press F3 “FX send”. Select the pad to be altered. Turn the FX send all the way up and select the Effect to be applied to the pad, in this case M1.

Press F5 “FX edit” and select Multi FX1. Turn the REV(erb) off for now. Turn the FILT(er) on and press the “open window” key.

The “4-BAND FILTER” Page

To get a fresh start set the all frequency dB’s to 0, set the Q to 99 for both MIDs, and set the F-MODs to 0. Go to the Effect Mixer screen (F5) and turn the direct signal off and the Dist/EQ levels up. This configuration should sound more like the original.

Select the frequencies to boost or cut and raise or lower the dB respectively to do so. Adjust the Q to zero in on frequencies. Adjust the speed of the filter modulation “F-MOD” (typically I only use this for Multi-Samples). And lastly, adjust the depth of the effect.

That’s how I do it… but others may use it differently.

Alesis MidiVerb 4 Info

Back on the MidiVerb posts again. I am trying to wrap my head around the preset creation and want to make a nice HUGE modulated verb. Here are my notes.

Concert Hall

  • Decay – Decay – determines how long the Reverb will sound before it dies away.
  • LPF – Lowpass Filter – The lower the setting, the less high frequencies of the input are allowed to pass thru to the reverb effect.
  • PDly – Pre-delay slightly delays the reverb so that the dry signal more easily stands out from the reverb.
  • PMix – Pre-Delay Mix – balance the amount of Pre-delay to Direct Signal. Makes for a bigger, smoother sounding Reverb.
  • Dens – Density – Density controls how the first reflection of the reverb effect will appear.
  • Diff – Determines the “thickness” of the reverb sound by adding more reflections to the reverb’s decay.
  • LDamp – Low Frequency Damping – Allows you to control the equalization of the reverb’s decay. You can cut low frequencies.
  • HDamp – High Frequency Damping – Low Frequency Damping – Allows you to control the equalization of the reverb’s decay. You can cut High frequencies.
  • Gate – Gating – Cutting off the reverb’s decay for a more “choppy” sound.
  • Hold – Hold for Gate – Hold Time determines how long the gate will be held open before it begins to turn off.
  • Rel – Release for Gate – The rate at which the gate closes is determined by the Release Time, which can be set from 0 to 500 ms.
  • Swirl – Swirl – useful for smoothing the decay of the reverb when set at a low value. When set to a high value, it creates a more dramatic detuning effect as the reverb decays.
  • Mix – Mix – Wet and Dry signal mix

Alesis MidiVerb 4 Decay Times

This is a quick list of decay times of each reverb type. I did this so I can quickly pick what reverb I was to edit to make by own preset.

  • Concert Hall – 1.97 seconds -135 seconds
  • Real Room – 1.00 seconds – 75.8 seconds
  • Ambience – 650 milliseconds – 21.2 seconds
  • Plate Reverb – 1.59 seconds – 61.2 seconds
  • Non Linear – 100 milliseconds – 600 milliseconds

For the ambient/shoegaze sounds I would go with a Concert Hall with modulation on it. More on that later…

Alesis MidiVerb 4 Notes

This is notes straight from the Alesis manual.

Auto input level settings:

  • Simultaneously press both [INPUT] and [OUTPUT] buttons.
  • Feed signal to the MidiVerb 4’s input(s). The Auto Input function will “listen” to the signal at its input(s) for about 5 seconds, and adjust the input levels for both channels.

Switching Between Preset and User Banks:

  • To instantly switch between the Preset and User banks, press the [PROG] button.

Bypass preset:

  • Preset 00 is setup as a “Bypass Program”, meaning that the dry, uneffected signal being sent to the MidiVerb 4’s input(s) is passing through and none of the effect’s output can be heard.

Saving Edited Programs:

  • Press [STORE]. The [STORE] button will flash, and the display will read: Store as X XX (nnnnnnnn)? …whereas XXX is a Program location number from 00—127 in the User bank, and nnnnnnnn is the Program’s name.
  • Use the [VALUE] knob to select which location (00—127) you wish to store the
  • selected Program into.
  • Change the Program’s name by pressing [A/NAME].
  • Press [STORE] again. The [STORE] button’s LED will momentarily flash quickly, while the display reads: Program nnnnnnnn Stored! …whereby nnnnnnnn is the Program’s name. The [STORE] button will turn off and the display will revert to wherever it was before [STORE] was pressed for the first time.

Bypassing Effects: (There are no “trails” When bypassed the effect is cut off)

  • By simultaneously pressing both the [PROG] and [UTIL] buttons on the front
  • panel
  • Connecting a footswitch to the [FOOTSWITCH] jack and pressing the
  • footswitch.

Setup a Footswitch:

  • Press [UTIL]. The [UTIL] button will light.
  • Press [EDIT/PAGE] until page 1 is selected. The display will read: Footswitch Dry Defeat
  • Press [B] to select the Footswitch parameter.
  • Turn the [VALUE] knob to set the Footswitch parameter to Bypass mode (bYP).

 Reset Unit to Factory Default:

  • Hold ‘D’ and ‘PROG’ while powering on.

My Akai MPC 2000 XL Upgrade Progress

I have been working on this for the last few months and feel I’m getting close to being done. What have I done so far?

  • Stock Akai MPC 2000 XL
  • 32 MB maximum memory expansion
  • 8-Out expansion board (IB-M208P)
  • EB16 Multi-effect processor board
  • SMPTE Addon (ICM2TC)
  • CF Card Reader (Hot Swapable) Removed the internal ZIP drive

Whats left to do?

  • Thick Pads from MPCStuff.com (Ordered them today)
  • I would love a bag to take my MPC with me places [maybe]

If I ever come across a FMX008M 8 MB flash board I will probably jump on it. I would love to store a default small kit on there just for quick beat layouts.

Custom Tap Tempo Pedal

I want to make a tap tempo pedal for my board that will control the timing of my Strymon Timeline and a Electo Harmonix Deluxe Memory Man. I think the best was to achieve this is to use a stereo 1/4 jack and use a stereo to mono spliter and connect it to both pedals.

This is from Strymon about the matter:

Many of you have asked us which external TAP tempo switches we recommend be used along with our TimeLine delay machine pedal. While we cannot recommend any products in particular we can tell you that the TimeLine will work with any external TAP tempo switch as long as the switch is designed with a single pole, double throw (SPDT) type switch that switches the TIP between the SLEEVE (ground or 0VDC) to the RING (5VDC).

If you want to drill your own holes and save a few bucks on the Hammond 1590 LB, here are the hole dimensions you need.

The output jack hole is 3/8″
The switch post hole is 15/32″