Metasonix F'ing F'er
Reaktor realization of Metasonix FF amp.
DESCRIPTION
This is a guitar amp model. The major difference between this one and others is that this one has two channels that are active simultaneously and they have adjustable phase. Which allows for a less frequently used, but very interesting array of tones to be achieved.
The guts of this are mostly cannibalized from Heinrich Angel's excellent Twang series of ensembles. Thanks Heinrich!
Also, I have no association with Metasonix or Eric Barbour. I am borrowing his material without his permission or knowledge in a way that is not for profit or gain. Merely amusement. So hopefully he would be amused.
I saw this on youtube this morning and I got very curious of how it would sound. So here is my attempt at how something like this could work. The actual device is a custom made $5000 tube amp with 26 exotic tubes, used in exciting and dangerous ways. I haven't actually played though one yet (maybe sometime this week), and the specific details of how the actual amp is wired are hard to come by. After a few minutes of messing around with the dual channel-phase idea I discovered that I was on to something interesting.
Out-of-phase and phase-distorted amp tones were used extensively by Led Zeppelin (Houses of the Holy) and Jimi Hendrix and to a lesser extent The Rolling Stones during the golden era of pop music.
In the modern era bands such as Queens of the Stone Age and Nine Inch Nails are finding new ways to exploit phase cancellation effects on guitars and other instruments.
User Notes:
The B view is a mess, I will need to spend some quality time on it to make it tolerable. Sorry.
The master output level controls are the big chicken knobs on the B view. There are also some mid and treble shift buttons in the center area.
This thing is pretty noisy. There are noise gates for each channel, I don't think I used them on any of the presets. They are there if you want them. After messing around for a while I discovered that it was so noisy that it could be a sound source itself. By mapping keys on the piano keyboard to the silver switches and modulating the tone controls you can have a whole lot of fun.
The Silver Switches are to turn each channel on or off , and to turn the built in filter on each channel. The filter is multimode amongst the various reaktor offerings, with adjustable cutoff and resonance. Which helps with sustain and by creating helpful overtones.
Most importantly... the phase knobs are pretty much the key to anything interesting here. The slightest movement of them makes a big difference. I mention it because "I have a feeling there's gold in them hills."
If there is any positive interest in the Reaktor community in this ensemble I will finish the B panel, if not...
Have Fun, I hope some others enjoy this too.
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