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Author Topic: Carving out effects in the frequency zone
Digital-
Larry

Posts: 192
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Post Carving out effects in the frequency zone
on: August 14, 2012, 07:43
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One thing I've enjoyed doing with DAW plugins is splitting the incoming signal into two or more regions with high/low/bandpass filters and then sending those to individual effects. So you might have 200-400 Hz going to a delay, 400-600 Hz going to a reverb, etc. This helps you keep your spectral mush under control while still having identifiable characteristics of delay, reverb, etc. Now you do need to be careful when using overdrive, distortion, fuzz, etc. because those tend to create many harmonics on their own that would tromp on things higher up in the spectrum. E.g. rolling off the high end prior to running your guitar signal through a fuzz tone doesn't make as much of a difference.

To my knowledge (which is limited of course) there isn't much in the way of pedals doing this. Notable exceptions I can think of would be:

a) Multi-band compressors

b) "Bass" specific modulation effects that high pass the instrument sound before effecting it, and pass the low signal through without effecting it so your low end stays solid but you get that chorusing flavor on top.

I haven't gone hog wild with this approach. Anyone done anything similar that delivered cool, yet unexpected results?
Jeff_H

Posts: 47
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Post Re: Carving out effects in the frequency zone
on: August 14, 2012, 08:49
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Craig Anderton had the Quadrafuzz which divided the input into four bands, and sent each band to a separate soft-clipping distortion, and then re-combined them with a mixer. I've never used one, but some people swear by them.

There's also the Harmonic Sweetener originally designed by Jules Ryckebusch and presented in a magazine in the 80's, and re-drawn and modified by RG Keen. It's a high-pass filter that feeds into a soft-clipping distortion section, and then recombines the original and clipped signals.

Thecoslar

Posts: 45
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Post Re: Carving out effects in the frequency zone
on: August 14, 2012, 11:43
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A guitarist I played with had a stereo output guitar and two separate signal chains. One chain had a bass booster and a delay pedal run into a marshall bass amp, and the other chain had a couple modulation effects run into a Fender Reverb. The bass was way rolled off on the Fender, and the overall effect was an incredibly strong fundamental sound with various effects layered over top. Not exactly what you're describing, but a simpler application of similar concepts.
smgear

Posts: 170
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Post Re: Carving out effects in the frequency zone
on: August 14, 2012, 12:36
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It's a great idea. I tried something kinda similar once back in the console days when I was working in a studio. I duplicated a clean signal onto 4 busses, lined them back into the board, shelved/scooped each channel to split up the frequencies, and then inserted different effects units into each. It kind of served the purpose to really expand a chorus from a single guitar, but I was pretty naive at the time (probably still am) and I didn't have the right compression/eq balance to effectively tame the results so I don't think I used the final effect. I should really retry it now in a DAW environment.
mwseniff

Posts: 149
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Post Re: Carving out effects in the frequency zone
on: August 15, 2012, 05:13
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I had a customer that used an active crossover on his guitar signal to split the signal into 3 frequency bands then applied different fx to each then put them back together with a passive mixer. Sounded very big when he played live. The only drawback was that he sort of ate the sonic spectrum which usually pissed off the keyboard player. The system worked best in a simple trio.
joe
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Posts: 224
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Post Re: Carving out effects in the frequency zone
on: August 30, 2012, 10:34
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I always though the guitar tones on the first couple of Jane's Addiction albums were pretty state-of-the-art in their day. I believe producer Dave Jerden used a similar technique, sending the guitar out to multiple amps and using each one as layer in the spectral sandwich.
bear

Posts: 153
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Post Re: Carving out effects in the frequency zone
on: August 30, 2012, 14:59
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Did Jerden do Alice in Chain's "Dirt"? Jerry was doing some sort of triamped setup on some of those tracks.

[Edit after Googling -- yes, that was a Dave Jerden produced album.]
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