The "Colour" Project Pt. 2: Going Modular August 31, 2012 16:48 10 Comments

A filter that adds 2nd harmonic distortion to everything below say….200hz

I want that DBX style distortion caused from Hard compression artifacts…hint hint…

Awesome idea. It just occurred to me that two of these might be great to put after a pair of pres that you’re using in conjunction with a passive summing box. Like, to give you a more transformer/vintage/console type sound if you wanted? Hm…

Oh man, the idea of pluggable distortion modules is so so great. It reminds me of the Studio Electronics ATC-1 synth with its pluggable filters. This is a super idea.

One use case I find I do a lot, is bastardizing effects pedals as inserts on mixing channels. For instance, I have a SansAmp Bass Driver that I end up using on many sources as an insert—specifically acoustic guitar and sometimes BG vox (basically as a poor-man’s Distressor when you crank gain fully clockwise.)

Initially I knee-jerked and thought “make a Bass Driver module!”, but then I realized that there are a whole host of stompboxes that I’d like to experiment with, without spending the bulk of my time deciding about an all-or-nothing insert choice—especially if blend was controllable.

That said, it’d be great to have a stompbox-friendly module with 2 1/4" jacks on it that handle all of the line impedance and levels between the Colour and the stompboxes. Certainly make fantastic on-board distortion modules as well, but having the choice to blend in a Tube Screamer I have lying around, or the Bass Driver, would open up lots of possibilities for budget-conscious studios.

Fully built units ,

i would be interested in,

2nd order harmonics/3rd

slew rate.

waveshaper etc,

Phase tool!!

This could be used as an awesome teaching aide. You could use the colour circuits to add ‘problems’ to your source audio like phase, comb filtering, clipping, distortion, etc. to help students learn what to listen for in each respective case.

Something like a screamer, to really destroy sound

By 400, I meant 4001. Woops, should have proofread haha.

Im a huge fan of different types/flavours of gain on guitar and bass and I’ve been wanting to experiment with different types of gain stages for a long time, and bringing it to the recording world is definitely something I can get on board with!

The 3 main ideas (Various JFets, Diodes/LEDs, and Opamps) already thrown around would definitely be of interest. A pedal company by the name of Fuzzrocious has a cool feature on most of their pedals where you can switch through different diode types to get different tonal characteristics out of the one pedal. They actually make a huge difference! Being able to switch from the Silicon to 400 to Germanium to LED really opens up the pedal and makes it quite versatile.

Instead of making separate modules for each variable of a gain type, having a switch for different component types would be very cool, and increase the “bang for the buck” factor of each module.

Tape and tube style distortions would also be of great interest. For tubes specifically, the Thermionic Culture Vulture gets a lot of praise and Id be very interested in learning how that circuit breaks down. Again, switches and controls for bias, triode/pentode modes etc would all be extremely appreciate to make each unit as versatile as possible.

I’ve only just gotten into this world on the recording side, so I’m not entirely sure what’s possible/not possible/useable/not useable.

Thanks for this, I was catching up on my HRS shows and heard about this project in one of the episodes, so I came to check it out. Super excited to follow this as it progresses!