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[JGreenslade]

I wasn't totally sure tape-echos qualified as "strange and other-worldly", but seeing as we're on to the topic I have attached a pic of the Telefunken tape-echo I picked up a couple of years back.

According to the excellent Mr Archut, only a small handful were built-to-order.

If you overdrive the input the distortion is wild, and guitarists seem to like it. It sounds pretty freaky when the heads start to feed-back as well.

If anyone here has experience with these unusual beasts I'd love to hear from them! I haven't seen mine for ages now as it has been sitting on a certain tech's bench awaiting rebuild, I must remember to chase him up...

Cheers,
Justin  

[Former Oceanway drone]

I'd like to nominate the A/DA STD-1. No, it was not the first sexually-transmitted disease in a box (don't get me started with puns either), it was based on an unusual chip from Motorola (I think) and allowed you to input a mono signal in and returned up to six different, non-harmonically related delays to either of two channels. An example would be 11 ms, 23 ms, 35 ms etc. You could control the clock speed and you could modulate it. Weird bird, but a subtle thickening effect.

Cheers,

Alan Tomlinson

P.S. SCAMP rack compressors were a trip, but I remember getting an "interesting" honky-tonk piano out of a Helpinstill electric grand with them.

Cheers,

Alan Tomlinson

[compasspnt]

thermionic wrote on Thu, 24 February 2005 13:00

...I have attached a pic of the Telefunken tape-echo...

Nice piece, Justin!  Certainly looks like a real man's echo!  Hope you get it running again.

[RMoore]

The Lexicon Vortex!

Thats a very strange other-wordly piece of gear..

http://www.loopers-delight.com/tools/vortex/vortex.html

OK - its fairly modern but I think it  was so bizarre & basically unusable for most normal people that it faded away without a trace..

A failed product but very cool...

The settings have names like "bleen', 'Aerosol', 'fractal', 'sweep' 'atmosphere'

I used the Vortex so much 8-10 yrs ago it was a signature sound for a while.
It became a running joke at a friend of mine's studio to yell out in a robot voice 'VORTEX'....I guess you had to be there..

You could get some cool ping pong type delays, with bizarre polyrhythms and strange phasey type effects...what was great was the MORPH feature and tempo tap, so in a flash you could get some strange textures whizzing around...
I really like that its non static & always subtly changing what its doing..
Definitely has its own unique sound.

We used them all over a couple of Legendary Pink Dots psychedelic rock albums back then too..very trippy man..

I have 2 in the racks still, but hardly use them these days..

Getting old and conservative  I guess

[cgc]

zmix wrote on Mon, 21 February 2005 13:46

Ross Hogarth wrote on Mon, 21 February 2005 12:47 OK you want weird tweaky gear The first is called an EMT 156 compressor/limiter When working properly a very nice limiter... One on e-bay right now!   http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&i tem=3781799244&ssPageName=STRK:MEWA:IT

Even closer to 'home' for Terry:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=2 3793&item=7303023656&rd=1&ssPageName=WDVW

I've been holding out for one of the 240 gold foil reverbs...

[John McEntire]

Maybe not so other-worldly, but the ITA (aka Wilkinson) LA-1B is a fantastic 6386 vari-mu comp/limiter. Anyone else have experience with this beast?

Something new that I can't live without is the inductor based SND stereo fixed filter bank. Check it: http://www.s-n-d.com/fb14se.html

Cheers,

John

[SingSing]

Hi all,

Speaking of filterbanks...I've got one of the Sherman Quad Modular Filterbanks [QMF] that I would say stems from a different universe. As the name implies, it's basically 4 filterbanks built into one box.

From the website...

"The 4 filterbanks have a separate input (i.e. you can plug in 4 different sound sources into the 4 different filterbanks, so actually it's some kind of weird mixing desk), or you can link them all together (i.e. when 1 input is used, you can process the source through all 4 filterbanks, and then you may have a filter slope of 96dB...)"

Needless to say, this beast absolutely destroys everything it touches.

Stefan

[RMoore]

John McEntire wrote on Fri, 25 February 2005 09:54

Maybe not so other-worldly, but the ITA (aka Wilkinson) LA-1B is a fantastic 6386 vari-mu comp/limiter. Anyone else have experience with this beast?

Maybe this is the same thing: I once tried some compressor/limiters for sale at a guys place here in Holland years ago & he said one was an LA-1...
An earlier version of the LA2A according to him..
looked cosmetically like the LA-2A as far as I could tell..
FWIW - I tried out an Altec 436, Altec 1591A, Telefunken U73b, and the LA-1,
The LA-1 was by far the coolest, literally everything we ran into it came out sounding like a 'record'..very smooth...very grand..very magical dare I say.
very appealing & left the others in the dust.
He was in the process of selling it for $$ to someone in the UK I recall...
More than I could afford at that time anyway..
Anyway, that was a euphoric compressor experience...
The same kind of LA-1?

[RMoore]

John McEntire wrote on Fri, 25 February 2005 09:54

Something new that I can't live without is the inductor based SND stereo fixed filter bank. Check it: http://www.s-n-d.com/fb14se.html Cheers, John

Looks interesting - did you check out their 16 step sequencer?
Is it funky?
Cheers,
Ryan

[RMoore]

Ahh - its all coming back to me now:

Another way to achieve strange and other Worldly sounds is to run your audio through an EMS Synthi A..the little suitcase synth..

One guy had one in the Legendary Pink Dots & I loved how it just mangled whatever you ran into it...with a bit of ring mod..
very bizarre and outerspace..

[RMoore]

OH - and YET another absolutely INSANE piece of 'gear' has to be the GRM TOOLS plugins from GRM..
Those things are INCREDIBLE!
OK, getting a bit off topic from the original point I guess,
but for true sound warpage and sound design nothing comes close...

http://www.grmtools.org/


Amazing..

I 1st heard them at a friends place - demonstrated a drum loop going in one end and coming out the other sounding like a jungle..
not 'jungle' music but literally like a field recording of a jungle with animal-like noises, parrots etc..WTF!

Extreme noticable difference!!

I was using them quite a bit a while ago when I was working in OS9 but haven't gotten the OSX versions happening yet..

BUT NOW I WILL.

Damn, I can't believe I forgot about the GRM TOOLS vibe..

I need some of that again

[Fibes]

Ryan Moore wrote on Fri, 25 February 2005 06:30

OH - and YET another absolutely INSANE piece of 'gear' has to be the GRM TOOLS plugins from GRM.. Those things are INCREDIBLE! OK, getting a bit off topic from the original point I guess, but for true sound warpage and sound design nothing comes close... http://www.grmtools.org/

I like them a lot, too bad they crash the hell out of my system when i try to use them in OSX. Since i need a wrapper, they really don't care to make them work...

[Fig]

Ryan Moore wrote on Thu, 24 February 2005 16:17

The Lexicon Vortex! Thats a very strange other-wordly piece of gear..

Indeed.  Good one!  I forgot about that.  I record a guitar player that filled the user bank with custom tweaks (no easy task!  Horrible interface, but VERY powerful).

The morphing capabilities between one sound effect and another was very cool.  He used it going into almost EVERY bridge in EVERY song he wrote.  Controlled it with a pedal.

Great MIDI implementation too, for us geeks.

I saw that show about the Pumpkins where Vig gave props to his Bi-Phase.  I have to store mine out of the control room, or I DO put everything through it

Another strange one is the talkback mic on Amek Angelas.  Attached  

[antti]

John McEntire wrote on Fri, 25 February 2005 08:54

Maybe not so other-worldly, but the ITA (aka Wilkinson) LA-1B is a fantastic 6386 vari-mu comp/limiter. Anyone else have experience with this beast? John

I have Gates Sta-Level copy done by English gentleman called Rob Flinn.
Sounds nice and impresses my clients every single time. It's another
6386 based vari-mu design. Great value for moneys. Weights a ton..  http://www.robflinn.eurobell.co.uk/stalevel.htm

Ryan Moore wrote on Fri, 25 February 2005 11:21

Ahh - its all coming back to me now: Another way to achieve strange and other Worldly sounds is to run your audio through an EMS Synthi A..the little suitcase synth..

All synths (especially modular stuff) will do wonders. Filters, distortion, ring modulators, dark spring reverbs, phasers, fixed filterbanks, vocoders.... I have Doepfer A100 I've been building up for last 9 years. Very cool, affordable, built like a tank and usable too

Others;

Studio I used to work for had this Vortex 4-1 tube mixer that was
really cool for overloading drums. Very different to anything else I've used.

Same studio also has Neve 1057 pre/eq modules. Mic pre is ok-ish but the eq
is weird. It's a germanium transistor design. High shelf is completely over the top. Same with low shelf (to a point that it starts self-oscillating).

Valley People Dynamite lunch box. Kind of a studio standard but not many people seem to use them. Over the top squash box. Also great for guitar solos.

Tons of pedals.. From drastic to plastic to spastik.

NI Reaktor. Lots of possibilities to tweak sounds and waste time.
Some of it can be usable too. Has it's own sound. Nice for pseudo stereo fx.
My H3000 basically..

[nother]

neve1073 wrote   
"for some strange other-worldy gear you must check these people out:

http://www.crammed.be/craworld/crw27/e/index.htm "

Truly some of the most inspiring music I've heard in a while.
My pick for gear is a toss up between the pile of crap Oktava dynamics I picked up at a flea market (many of which really put the microphonic back into microphone) and the dbx 188 that seems to self-oscillate in expand mode.