Modulation effects pedals
We highly recommend the Astra Modulation Machine if you need a highly versatile mod solution, where each mode is flexible and defines studio-quality sound. As you can probably tell by the name, the Astra Modulation Machine is the mod pedal in the range. Just like the Golden Reverberator and Starlight Echo Station , the Astra is powered by a dual-processor engine - which enables it to emulate classic mod effects with stunning realism. Using the controls for Depth, Intensity, Shade and Shape, you have more scope for tweaking than what the original units have to offer - allowing you to take these iconic effect sounds to new places. For further information on our finance options, including representative examples, please click here.
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Modulation Effects: Flanging, Phase Shifting, and More
In electronics and telecommunications, modulation is defined as a process in which one or more properties of a periodic waveform is altered based on the information to be transmitted. The periodic waveform that gets altered is known as the carrier signal. When we talk of guitar modulation effects, it is not exactly the same process as defined above, in the true electrical sense.
So let us understand what modulation in audio effects parlance means. The purpose is to add intensity, depth and layers to the original guitar signal without any distortion. Modulation effects can make your tone wobble, chop, spin or vibrate adding space and dimension in the process.
Their sounds can range from mere pulsing of the guitar volume, as in the case of a tremolo to complex swirling and modulation of frequencies in your guitar signal to very dramatic effects. In the field of signal processing, modulation is carried out by any one or combination of the following processes:. In modern times, the electronic circuitry used to create these effects can range from being fairly basic to very complex.
Many of these effects can be built through analog or digital technology. It is generally accepted that analog effects produce warm and organic sounds while digital technology can generate powerful and dramatic effects.
Let us now look at each of these effects in detail and go through their underlying principles, impacts, control parameters and important aspects to consider before buying these effects. The early phaser pedals were developed to recreate the sound of rotating organ speakers.
These pedals gained popularity in the 's and have grown in prominence ever since and have become one of the most recognizable effects. Phasers or phase shifters work by splitting the guitar signal into two identical copies.
The first copy passes through the pedal without any processing and is referred to as the dry signal. The second copy or leg is shifted out of phase by an angle with respect to the first leg. This phase shifting is done throughout the frequency spectrum and the output is called the wet signal.
Many stages of voltage controlled all pass filters are used for the shifting process that keeps amplitude of the leg the same and just shifts the phase.. The two signals are then blended at the depth and speed dictated by the pedal control settings to create the phase effect. Blending results in constructive and destructive interference, whereby the out of phase frequencies are cancelled, resulting in characteristic notches of the phasers.
The number of notches depends on the number of stages, as discussed in detail in the next section. Notch filter causes attenuation of a very narrow band of frequencies, while allowing others to pass through, looking like a curved V shape on a frequency domain graph. The center frequency of the notch is the deepest point with maximum attenuation. These center frequencies are then modulated up and down, creating a feeling of automatically moving tone control. The magnitude of phase shift varies with frequency and changes periodically, resulting in frequency sweep type of effect.
This is known as phase sweep. The wet signal is passed through a number of all pass filter stages to enhance the effect. More the number of stages, more pronounced is the phase effect. Analog phasers may have 4, 6, 8 or 12 stages while digital effects may go upto 32 or evenmore.
A Phaser with 12 stages will produce 6 notches or peaks in the frequency spectrum. More stages may not always mean better, but create necessarily different effects. You can see how all pass filters and phasers work and effect of stages in the below video. The controls on the phasers may accordingly vary from the very basic ones to very complex. A four stage unit may just have the speed control, while the models with eight to twelve stages may have multiple knobs and switches.
The common controls on the phase effects used to modulate wet signals are:. The sound of a phaser can vary from a very subtle, watery burble to a sweeping, dramatic vibrato like oscillations. That is, it sounds equally great on clean and dirty tones.
The iconic tone at the intro to the song summarizes the effect very nicely. Most players prefer to lightly add color to their tone by using it with a little restraint in the former manner. Subtle phasing can add a lot of life to your otherwise dull and lifeless clean tone.
Phaser is a versatile modulation pedal that adds texture and motion to overdriven tones and deepens a clean tone. It can bring in a very subtle chewy texture and increased depth even at very slow speed and low depth settings. A deep setting on the phaser can make a clean tone sound really amazing. Slow speed setting causes gradual increase and decrease in resonance and sounds like an EQ filter moving up and down the frequencies.
This is due to cancellation of some frequencies and addition to the other ones. At higher speed setting, instead of a sweeping sound like in the previous case, you get a pulsing effect. Use of phaser adds a lot of character to the standard lead tone giving you more expression in the same way as the Wah pedal does. Increasing the feedback, adds more resonance to the sweep, making it more pronounced. There are many songs with exemplary use of phasers that act as a major source of inspiration for aspiring guitar players and experts alike.
The following list of selected songs will provide you the feel of the different options you have. You are familiar with time effects such as delay and reverb. Delay effects become much more interesting when the delay time is allowed to change.
Here we enter into the realms of delay modulation. The effect derives its name from the early methods used to create it. Same music recording was played on two reel to reel tapes simultaneously.
The output from the two tape playing heads was mixed into a third recorder. Finger was put into the flange, spinning the reel on one machine and withdrawn, time and again, creating a varying time delay with the other machine. This resulted in a spacey, swooshing or jet plane sweeping sound as the harmonics add or cancel each other.
Some players consider and call flangers as the big brother of phasers. While they can sound similar, confusing many, there is a big difference in the way they are created. Let us understand some critical differences between the two. If we subject a piece of music to a fixed delay of 50 ms, we get an effect known as a slap echo. The delay unit will delay the entire piece by this set delay time. This is known as delay without modulation.
Some beautiful, powerful and very interesting effects can be created by changing the delay times using modulation effects on it. Delay subjected to modulation controls like rate, depth and shape with continuously changing delay times is known as a modulated delay.
In flangers also, like phasers, the guitar input is split and each part follows a different propagation path. The dry or unaltered part goes straight to the output, while the second part passes through a delay line, where it gets subjected to delay modulation effect before mixing with the original signal to create the effect.
All modulation effects require a simple but effective array of controls. Let us look at the set of control parameters for flangers. Similar to the phasers, low frequency oscillator waveform parameters like amplitude, frequency and shape govern the modulation process. The difference lies in the fact that a fixed delay gets modulated in flanging instead of the phase. The main controls are:. As discussed earlier, the metallic, jet engine like whooshing sound, sets a flanger apart from the phaser.
Though it is possible to carry out flanging on a clean tone, most music players prefer it on a driven tone. The flanging effect is very subtle and sounds natural, when you try it on a clean tone, but clearly stands out on a distorted tone. In fact, you can try the flanging effect on a white noise, where it is glaringly obvious. You will find that at slow speeds, the effect does not go over the top.
Crank up the depth and the speed, it starts to create interesting warbling sounds, where the pitch goes up and down emulating a plane flying past you. This distinct rise and fall sound is the main characteristic of flanging. Flanging may thicken or provide more stereo width to the sound. Listen to the iconic flanging tone having shimmering oscillations of the galloping guitar riff in the track Barracuda by Heart below.
Hence we will discuss aspects that are specific to flanger modulation effects. Donner Jet Convolution. Joyo Flanger. Mooer Eleclady. Best way to visualise the phenomenon of chorus is by imagining multiple guitarists playing the same part of the music together.
In Spite of their best efforts, the players can never be in perfect sync with each other and will be out of time, ever so slightly. Even when playing the same note, the force applied on string by each of them will vary, inducing miniscule differences in the pitch.
This produces the Chorus effect, where different sounds played at almost the same time and very similar pitches appear to converge and perceived as one by the listener. This ensemble effect of many guitar players playing together is what a chorus modulation effect pedal tries to mimic. The successful implementation of chorus effects should ensure that none of the constituent sounds appear to be out of tone.
Delays are classified as long more than 50 ms , medium 20 ms to 50 ms or short less than 20 ms. With short delays we get the radical comb filter effects, that on modulation gives rise to flanging. Longer delays result in a broad range of echo based effects. Medium delays are too fast for echo based effects and too slow for flanging effects and sounds like two players playing the same track. Chorus effect also uses the common multitrack technique of signal splitting into two copies like other modulation effects discussed so far.
By adding a signal delayed by 30ms to the original signal, the chorus pedal creates a slightly asynchronous sound of two instruments playing simultaneously.
Modulation Pedals
In electronics and telecommunications, modulation is defined as a process in which one or more properties of a periodic waveform is altered based on the information to be transmitted. The periodic waveform that gets altered is known as the carrier signal. When we talk of guitar modulation effects, it is not exactly the same process as defined above, in the true electrical sense. So let us understand what modulation in audio effects parlance means.
Effects unit
This website uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience on your website. Learn more. Using BIAS Pedal software on a desktop computer or mobile device, you can use two separate modulation engines and choose between modulation types, change wave shapes, and use the exclusive Wobble control to take it to the next level. Change the headroom by varying the voltage on the virtual power supply, modify the sustain with the compression section, or utilize two super-flexible EQ stages for even more tone-shaping power. Offering both True and Buffered Bypass operation, the BIAS Modulation pedal is built into a sturdy road-ready enclosure and uses high-quality components. Assign three different custom modulation effects pedals to the tour-grade footswitches, and then change the modulation speed with Tap Tempo, an optional expression pedal, or follow MIDI Beat Clock. Built-in Bluetooth wireless makes it easy to tweak sounds with your mobile device even at the gig, and the industry-standard DC power jack is compatible with every professional pedalboard power supply on the market.
Modulation Effects – Flanger, Phaser, Tremolo & Chorus Pedal
The history of modulation effects is long and fascinating, stretching from the electromechanical devices of the s up to our ultra-modern digital plugins. We tend to think of music creation very differently now than how it was traditionally done. Originally, you pointed a microphone at a group of musicians and tried to capture as realistic a recording of that performance as possible in real-time. Along the way though, forward-minded visionaries began to experiment with ways to alter sound.
6 Best Modulation Pedals In 2021 (Budget, High End & More)
We round up a few essential pedals to try out, covering chorus, vibrato, rotating speaker effects and plenty more besides. Some players might be happy with a minimal control set — one of the most revered phasers of all time, the MXR Phase 90, has a single knob — but others might want controls for depth, speed, wave shape and more. It applies random pitch variation to your signal, which can be dampened for more subtle effects, or let run wild on your tone. The mix control allows for a range of chorus or pure vibrato effects, but in either case, the random aspect of the modulation makes the pedal sound anything but sterile. Importantly, the modulation is combined with an adjustable envelope-controlled low-pass gate, meaning the louder you play, the more bass there is.
MainStage Pedalboard modulation pedals
By: Gerlinda Grimes. Back in the s, Don Leslie developed a speaker cabinet that split a signal between a inch drum speaker and a high-end horn. The drum and horn rotated at different speeds in opposite directions, producing sounds which revved from slow to shimmering as the speakers rotated in and out of phase with each other. Attempts to reproduce these sounds resulted in the first modulation effects. Studio trickery, such as the kind of manual tape flanging the Beatles used on "Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds," also provided inspiration for future modulation pedals [source: Hunter]. Popular types of modulation pedals include:. Modulation effects produce some of the most interesting and bizarre sounds available for guitar. However, if you think pitch and frequency effects are fun, time-based effects will really blow your mind.
How Guitar Pedals Work
An effects unit or effects pedal is an electronic device that alters the sound of a musical instrument or other audio source through audio signal processing. Most modern effects use solid-state electronics or digital signal processors. Some effects, particularly older ones such as Leslie speakers and spring reverbs , use mechanical components or vacuum tubes. Effects are often used as stompboxes , typically placed on the floor and controlled with footswitches.
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Modulation pedals come in many varieties. Chorus, tremolo, phaser, flanger and vibrato all fall into this category. This means modulation pedals can give your guitar a fluid, engaging tone that is never static. Chorus is the slowest and perhaps most often used: lots of guitar sounds in the 80s used chorus for a thick, shifting clean sound. Chorus pedals are enjoying a renaissance thanks to a number of new designs and reissues of classic effects.
Note though that there will be a couple more surprises in the final reckoning! Unlike the Delay and Reverb category I actually own a few of these, while other outstanding ones are very high on the priority list for next year. There are a few Tremolos for sure and a few chorusing style effects - but not sufficient numbers to call it a trend. There are some truly fantastically innovative smart pedals here - which show how this format keeps evolving and moving along.
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