Effects Bay

Okay bass players… time to get excited. Will at Source Audio just sent me some info on the new Soundblox Bass Envelope Filter (BEF), and it seems pretty badass! Here is the official press release:

Boston, MA – Source Audio, the multiple award winning guitar effects pedal innovators, will be showcasing their new Soundblox Bass Envelope Filter at Bass Player Live in Hollywood, CA on October 23rd.  The BEF is the latest addition to the company’s expanding line of bass effects.

First run models of the pedal have already appeared in the touring rigs of bassists Mike Gordon of Phish, Kevin Walker of Prince/Justin Timberlake, and Jai Dillon of Jason Mraz.

“I’ve had a eureka experience with the Bass Envelope Filter.  It is the first unit with enough control to preserve the low-end without sacrificing clarity.” says Mike Gordon who added the Soundblox Bass Envelope Filter to his set-up in addition to the Soundblox Pro Multiwave Bass Distortion for Phish’s 2010 Summer Tour.  His use of both pedals can be heard on performances from the tour found on LivePhish.com.

“Source Audio has revolutionized the bass envelope filter as we know it today and resurrected the bass guitar.” adds Kevin Walker.  “What I once needed keyboard for, I can now do with my bass”.

The design of the BEF includes 21 different filter sounds including Two Pole Filters, Four Pole Filters, Single Peak Filters, Triple Peak Filters, Peak & Notch Filters, and Phasers that can all be modulated through either watery positive filter sweeps or punchy negative/reverse filter sweeps.  In addition, the interface allows the user to select the frequency range of the filter sweeps as well as the attack and decay speeds of each effect.  Like all Soundblox pedals, the BEF can be optionally controlled by a Hot Hand motion-sensing ring.  Placing the ring on the player’s hand or anywhere on the instrument allows the movement of the player to modulate the filter sweeps of the pedal.

Now widely acclaimed for bringing innovation into the world of guitar effects pedals, Source Audio was founded in January 2005 by former engineers, scientists, and executives of Analog Devices, Kurzweil Music Systems, and Thomas H. Lee Partners. Since the 2006 release of its flagship product, the Hot Hand motion-sensing ring, Source Audio’s distortion, modulation and Hot Hand products have been recognized through multiple awards from Guitar Player, Guitar World, Bass Player, and Premier Guitar Magazines.

Street Price for the Soundblox Bass Envelope Filter is expected to be $119.  It is available now.  For a limited time only, a wired Hot Hand controller will be included.  For more about the Soundblox effects pedals and to view video demos, visit www.sourceaudio.net or call Source Audio directly at 781.932.8080.

The Soundblox Bass Envelope Filter will be available for hands-on demos at the Source Audio booth at this year’s Bass Player Live at SIR Studio in Hollywood, CA on October 23rd and 24th.

Okay, that sounds all fine and dandy, but let’s see how it sounds. Will also let me know about a few videos they did. One basically demos the pedal, and the second video goes into the technical aspects of envelope filters, etc. It was quite interesting.

Here is the Tech Talk video about the Bass Envelope Filter. By the way, Bob Chidlaw is my hero.

I’m hoping Will Cady is reading this post. If so, what’s the deal with your headstock? Meaning the snake-charm-type-thing that’s tied on to the headstock? I feel there is a powerful mojo story there.

Once again, Source Audio is pumping out some great gear, please check out their site for their other effects!

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I just received an interesting email from Will Cady of Source Audio. He mentions their blog post today, where they’re trying to get a online jam session going on with Source Audio pedals. Basically, Will built a few tracks on top of a drum track, you can download the extended outro (via SoundCloud). Below is the YouTube video with Will jamming:

Source Audio is encouraging others to download the track and shoot video of themselves playing on top of it. They’ll post the video on their blog and Facebook page. It can be bass, guitar, etc.. just as long as it’s using a Source Audio product. For all the information and to download the track, check out this post!

Here is an example with Bryan Tyler:

This totally sounds like a fun project!

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So.. Summer NAMM is getting ready.. and many friends/dealers/vendors are heading over. I’ve been asked by several people if EffectsBay.com will be there, and unfortunately, no. I think I’ll try to make a good effort for Winter ’11, but we’ll see.  Speaking of friends, I noticed that @gearalley tweeted about a Premier Guitar video showing a interview of another friend – Source Audio during the Winter ’10 NAMM. I thought this video was quite good on describing their SoundBlox Pro line.

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The following is a guest post by Source Audio about their Soundblox Pro Classic Distortion. If you are interested in a guest post or review, please contact me!

The Ghosts in the Machine

Referred to as the “best distortion box ever” by both vintage tone champion Adrian Belew of King Crimson and neo-shredder Herman Li of DragonForce, the newly released Soundblox Classic Distortion by Source Audio is showing that analog soul can be captured on a digital chip.

A veritable Ghost Trap a la Ghostbusters, the Soundblox Classic Distortion houses eleven recaptured spirits of prevalent distortion sounds resulting from a five-year listening study of stomp boxes and tube amps. Sounds from the Big Muff Pi, Fulltone Distortion Pro, Tone Bender, Fuzz Face, ProCo Rat and Octavia can all be selected at the turn of a knob on the Soundblox Classic and then further tweaked by a graphic equalizer, two drive knobs, midrange knob and an output knob.

In addition, Source Audio has provided the option of tweaking the old sounds even further via an expression pedal morphing function, MIDI input connection and a jack for the Hot Hand motion-sensing controller.

Source Audio, now in it’s fifth year as a company, is a true nod to the marriage of music and technology. Having formed as a spin-off from the well-known semi-conductor company Analog Devices, they were able to request a customized state-of-the-art Digital Signal Processor, the SA601 chip, to pursue their music-centric interests. The two sets of ears in the listening study, VP of Engineering Jesse Remignanti (former audio systems and software engineer at Analog Devices) and Chief Scientist Bob Chidlaw (former senior engineer at Kurzweil Music) sat down to discuss the listening study, the process of creating the Soundblox Classic Distortion and a few other topics for the audiophile at home.

The need for a pedal that housed multiple quality distortion tones was clear to Jesse Remignanti, a veteran guitarist of the New England music scene. One of his challenges for the creation of the Soundblox Classic Distortion was to design an interface that could work seamlessly on-stage. He muses, “I’ve seen some guys who have anywhere from six to ten pedals on their board which are just distortion…jumping from one pedal to the other and doing a toe-tapping dance to get one sound to another sound.” He continues, “It’s easier to just have it called up on a preset or use the expression pedal. It’s useful for anyone from the pro musician to the guy who’s doing cover tunes and needs a different sound because they’re doing Metallica and then The Cars.”

For Chidlaw, a collector of tube amps, the challenge was to create digital sounds from scratch that matched his standards for analog sounds, which were quite high at the beginning of the project. “When I started at Source Audio, I was a real tube amp snob” states Chidlaw matter-of-factly. “The only distortion I would use was real distortion from a tube amp. I would sometimes modify amps to get more gain. Turning up the gain on a Marshall JCM-800 was one of my little moves.”

To truly capture some of the most notable distortion sounds in the fuzz pantheon, Bob and Jesse would have to explore the world of stomp boxes and as they dug deeper, Chidlaw’s tastes began to open up. “I had built solid-state distortion devices before. I really had just rejected them all by this point 5 years ago.” He reflects, “But then we bought a distortion pedal, the Fulltone Distortion Pro and I thought, ‘wow, this actually does sound quite nice.’ Then when we really started getting into the Classic Distortion we started acquiring a lot more pedals. I personally bought far too many for my growing collection. I really came to see the charm in solid-state distortions. It really gives you something that a vaccum tube can’t. You can’t get that sound from a vacuum tube amplifier. It can’t be done.”

In mapping the digital sounds to be placed in the Soundblox Classic Distortion, Chidlaw had to create each algorithm from the ground up, attempting to capture the essence of each distortion tone. “An algorithm is a recipe of how the sound is processed…There’s a lot of trial and error; a lot of tweaking… I just have to use my ears to try to compare what the digital system is doing with what the real analog pedal is doing.”

He continues, “You can’t really point to a sound as it goes by. Try to hear just what it is that makes a particular fuzz have it’s own sound. What is in the sound? All you can say is ‘doesn’t that sound kind of harsh in the high end?’ and maybe it does or maybe it doesn’t strike you that way… If you’re making something analog, you can say ‘I’ll use some of these transistors that were very cheap back in the day when this thing was built’ but what is the digital signal processing equivalent of a cheap transistor? Not at all obvious…”

The timing of the release for the Soundblox Classic Distortion is fairly fortuitous, coming at a time of heightened expectations for musicians. As modern music fans gain more access to more music across a longer timeline, they seem to gravitate toward either the eccentric or the tried and true. A look at the Billboard Top Ten shows a reissue of Exile on Main Street by the Rolling Stones alongside the likes of Lady Gaga and LCD Soundsystem.

The aim of the Soundblox Classic Distortion is a near precise match for the needs of the modern performer in that it can call up the guitar tone from The Rolling Stones’ ‘Satisfaction’ in one moment and then in the next, it can create a never-before-heard sound.

Earl Slick Plays ‘Satisfaction’:

“It gives you some really interesting effects” explains Remignanti, “because you could get an in-between sound from two completely different pedals. You could switch from the Rat Tone to the Tube Drive or something just by rocking the expression pedal.”

Chidlaw adds, “You can get some more bizarre things happening in the middle of those morphs. You could say there is only twelve selector positions on the Classic Distortion, but if you use the morph control, you’ve really got hundreds of more possible selector positions by just, sort of, freezing the morph. Sixty percent of the way between this and this and you’ve got this new sound that’s in there.”

The versatility of the Classic Distortion can be traced back to that signature chip, the SA601 Digital Signal Processor. The power of the chip allowed the Source Audio engineers to push the pedal into new territories for a distortion stompbox. When asked about the graphic equalizer, another of the pedals unique features, Remignanti says simply “We had enough room in the processing and in the interface to add a seven-band EQ and it’s programmable for each preset. You could have the same distortion effect with three different EQ settings and get totally different sounds out of it. So, it’s a very nice, flexible feature…[It’s] not something commonly seen on distortion pedals.”

Matching the considerable uniqueness of the sounds, the aesthetic and layout of the Soundblox Classic Distortion have a simple and modern feel. Remignanti explains, “Our goal with the overall design was to make them simple in terms of the interface and the overall appearance but also modern looking. We tried not buy into the whole retro thing in our main design philosophy for the housings and the look of the pedals. [As for] the interface, we tried to keep it to as low a number of knobs and controls as possible, but still allow the user to get a lot of features and a lot of different sounds.”

For more information on the Soundblox Classic Distortion, please visit: http://www.sourceaudio.net

Tech Talk Video 2:

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I was stoked to receive a package from Source Audio last week containing a shirt for Free Shirt Wednesday! I’ve communicated with Will Cady of Source Audio via email and twitter and he’s always kept me in the loop of what’s been happening at the Source Audio compound.

Source Audio is a company that is making some interesting and great pedals for the professional musician. Designed for the studio or stage, they’re built with innovation in mind. I’ve posted a few videos about their products in the past, and they’re definitely worth a look. Some of the interesting pedals would be the Hot Hand Wah, which is controlled by some type of laser on the hand, or mounted on the headstock of the instrument. A different approach to wah control by using something else other than your foot. The other pedal that really got my attention is the Soundblox Pro Multiwave distortion. This distortion pedal is insanely versatile. Also, for you bass heads out there, they make the Soundblox Pro Multiwave Bass distortion.

Will Cady is a damn fine bassist, and it’s great to see someone that understands the musical requirements or necessities of a pedal while having the ability to actually create and meet those needs.

If you get a chance, check out their website, where they have a few other pedals I didn’t mention. Check out their video clips – they sound great and are quite thorough. Also, check out their dealer page for information on where you can buy some Source Audio gear!

Thanks Will!

Now, if you want to be featured on Free Shirt Wednesday.. it’s really quite simple. Send me a shirt, if it’s music related (ie: guitar builder, band, pedal builder, guitar shop, recording studio, etc) I’ll dedicate a blog post about your biz, band, etc. I’ll take a photo with my aging, slightly pudgy mug and post it. Great simple, cheap form of advertising. Still interested? Then check this page for more info

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Will from Source Audio sent me a email this morning letting me know of a video he shot. Here is a video of him playing Jaco Pastorius’ Portraig of Tracy using the Source Audio Hot Hand Wah. Basically, it’s a ring you wear, that a pedal (I’m guessing with some type of photo resistor) interprets the light intensity to adjust the ‘wah’ effect. Pretty cool!

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Will Cady (@willcady) sent me another email yesterday letting me know after then announced the videos of the SoundBlox Pro Multiwave Distortion (I blogged about it here) by Source Audio , they were getting a few questions on various bass forums about how it would sound live, so they created a series of videos. Below is the first one, if you’d like to see more videos please check out Will’s blog (http://willcady.com).

It sounded like the bass signal was recorded direct. Will, if you’re reading this was this recorded with open mic or direct? If this is direct, I’m curious how well this will cut through with a full band in live scenario.

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Will Cady of Source Audio sent me a email today and let me know about some great videos for their new SoundBlox Pro Multiwave distortion. I have to say these videos were quite great and really shows the versatility of the multiwave. Very interesting. You bass players out there should really enjoy this first video!

The next video goes into additional detail on the SoundBlox and shows what it can do with guitar. You can find out where to buy the SoundBlox Pro MultiWave at their newly updated website (http://www.sourceaudio.net).

You can also find some good deals on other Source Audio pedals at Amazon!

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On Twitter, @SourceAudioFX let me know about their motion-controlled bass wah pedal. Motion-Controlled bass wah pedal?!?! Well, I surely had to check that out. I was pretty impressed with the video I saw which is included below:

Interesting to use a light source for the manipulation. Reminded me of a Theremin guitar effect pedal that you could manipulate with a laser pointer, also reminded me of my Morely Power-Fuzz Wah, which used photo resistor instead of potentiometer to ‘wah’ the tone. I thought it was interesting idea to have a ‘ring’ or you could mount it on the headstock. I’m wondering if it’s using a specific light frequency since you wouldn’t want other light sources to manipulate the effect, etc.

Source Audio was a new name to me as well. Checked out their site, and they have some pretty cool effects, it’s definitely worth spending a few minutes and checking them out!

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