Source Audio is working on a MIDI adapter that plugins into the TRRS port
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Source Audio Sorcerers Society (S.A.S.S) Part 3
- Thread starter gregmon79
- Start date
rsmith601
Commercial User
- Apr 14, 2009
- 4,461
- 8,356
- Disclosures
- CEO and Co-Founder, Source Audio
Jesse and I did not communicate this very well internally!!
My bad. Sorry about that.
Yes, its a very simple MIDI interface dongle that goes into the TRRS port on our pedals.
Long time lurker... First time poster here!
My Ultrawave bass came yesterday, and after a few hours play last night, I don't get it!
I currently have a C4 on my board and have some great patches on that, so I'm familiar with the editor etc
I was looking for a tap tempo tremelo, along with a mastotron style fuzz, a synthy fuzz for The Prodigy type stuff and some more tradition drives and fuzzes that I could run in parallel (for the occasional Kasabian - Clubfoot cover).
I've sussed out the tremelo with an additional tap tempo switch, and there are a few good mastotron patches in the neuro hub but the more traditional drives evade me! Everything seems built around the foldback stuff, which isn't so useful to me (although it may work for the prodigy stuff) Very tempted to return, which isn't like me at all! What am I missing?!
My Ultrawave bass came yesterday, and after a few hours play last night, I don't get it!
I currently have a C4 on my board and have some great patches on that, so I'm familiar with the editor etc
I was looking for a tap tempo tremelo, along with a mastotron style fuzz, a synthy fuzz for The Prodigy type stuff and some more tradition drives and fuzzes that I could run in parallel (for the occasional Kasabian - Clubfoot cover).
I've sussed out the tremelo with an additional tap tempo switch, and there are a few good mastotron patches in the neuro hub but the more traditional drives evade me! Everything seems built around the foldback stuff, which isn't so useful to me (although it may work for the prodigy stuff) Very tempted to return, which isn't like me at all! What am I missing?!
Make sure you are using single band distortion, and use only the first few distortion engines. Lower the gain, and you should get something a bit more “normal”.
Definitely agree with Derek. I guess you do this anyway given that you have the C4 but the way I've tweaked the community sounds is to look for something similar to what I want and then look how it was created and then tweak as required.
If you just want traditional type overdrive then perhaps the Aftershock would be quicker to dial in the sounds you want. I think for ease of use if I was building a Source Audio board today then I'd pick the Atlas Compressor and the Aftershock rather than an Ultrawave.
/\ /\ /\ Defiantly this! if you look for "overdrive" in your neuro search you should fine some of the more gentler tones. Nathan Navaro created a light overdrive patch. I've created a few nice useful patches too under the name of "gazzajagman". "GMC Snappy Comp and OD", where expression pedal morphs between compressor and light overdrive. You could map one of the control knobs to Morph if you aren't using an expression pedal.
I made a very versatile "GMC Comp & OD & Fuzz" that adds a gated fuzz to the above, Control 3 morphs between compressor and Overdrive and Control 4 blends the 2nd channel balance control (gated fuzz: think mastotron). That's three really useful sounds in one patch.
I wrote a "GMC OD / Muff / Gated Fuzz", along the same lines as above but with the three most useful dirt settings I use on bass.
Then there's the "GMC B:assmaster & gated Muff" patch that nails the Brass master tones and Gated Muff tones...so pretty much anything that you can get out of a "your the Doom" or "Heiro Bead", this patch will get you close.
for creating your own patches, choose the 1-band (no split). That will calm the pedal down and put you into the traditional distortion tones.
Use "7 Diode harder gate" Engine for a gated fuzz sound, also dial in the Noise gate threshold and input high pass to add another Gate (works really well in the gated Muff patch). Or use "1 Basic Distortion" engine for classic tube style overdrive. Use the distortion amount (control1) to dial in light to heavy overdrive / light fuzz. For a muff style distortion / fuzz, use the "2 hard clip" engine. Pull back the drive a bit with this or you will quickly find a square wave distortion (which you might like). A bit of compression will also make it feel a lot like a muff too.
Thanks for the advice both of you... unfortunately I SOLD an aftershock and a couple of other pedals to get this, thinking it'd cover the aftershock and more. I'll take your advice on board and have a proper play tonight before making my decision. If the C4 can do the same tremolo effect with tap tempo then it may be the end of the ultrawave experiment though!
Wow, what a mega reply! Thanks GMC!
I was looking through your patches last night actually, there's some great stuff there! I downloaded your mastotron patches and a couple of the fuzz ones you've mentioned.
As great as they are though that Kasabian club foot sound I'm looking for is a very specific stacked/parallel distortion and fuzz sound and there are just SO many options it seems difficult to nail, assuming it's even possible!
I'll absolutely try your advice with the different clipping modes, I think putting a brand or more general description to the engines as you have will be a huge help! I think the morph stuff goes over my head a tad, I'm looking at more set and forget... but from what you're saying maybe I should think of it more as a blend and try again.
I was looking through your patches last night actually, there's some great stuff there! I downloaded your mastotron patches and a couple of the fuzz ones you've mentioned.
As great as they are though that Kasabian club foot sound I'm looking for is a very specific stacked/parallel distortion and fuzz sound and there are just SO many options it seems difficult to nail, assuming it's even possible!
I'll absolutely try your advice with the different clipping modes, I think putting a brand or more general description to the engines as you have will be a huge help! I think the morph stuff goes over my head a tad, I'm looking at more set and forget... but from what you're saying maybe I should think of it more as a blend and try again.
Along with what GMC shared, check out the SA pdf on the different distortion types. Helped me get my head around some of it!
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It’s entirely possible the Ultrawave is not the right tool for you. It wasn’t for me. Honestly, my favorite element was the chorus effects it can do, not the distortions.
You're right, this is the realisation I've come to. I feel like SA have dropped the ball with this one a bit... It's going back to the shop and I've bought a EHX Big Muff Sovtek deluxe in its place, between that and my C4 I should be able to cover everything.
The Ultrawave is great at what it does. But what it does doesn’t do what I want to do. Which is fine, not everything has to be for me. Hopefully your Muff gets you to the places you want to go.
- May 16, 2007
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- Volunteer developer/beta tester with Source Audio, Morningstar Engineering & MORTRIX
It’s not so much ball-dropping, more like it’s a bigger ball than many people can handle.
I’m notorious for my inability to handle big balls.
It just seemed no matter what I did with it, it sounded flat and lifeless with no real body to it. I know this may be a rediculous critique for a digital pedal... but it sounded so "digital". I must point out that the compressor and tremolo were great, and I LOVE my C4 synth. I'm sure this ticks a lot of boxes for a lot of people, and the boffins at SA are far more knowledgeable than me, but as an ignorant consumer I expected a £249 pedal to sound better
I'm not sure I'd call it flat or lifeless. My critique is the exact opposite...it's a bit too lively out of the box and needs calming down with normalised patches. I love the synth / multiband splits, it's trail blazing new ground. It's the first digital dirt pedal that accurately models the more complex dirt behaviour of some of the more complex dirt pedal circuit designs. This pedal can easily nail Your the Doom type of tones, B:assmaster tones, Octave up dirt tones...and it does it really well. However, sometimes I need a simple Overdrive. It's all in there but it has to be teased out. It's a pity that you didn't live with it a bit longer. I've had mine for about a year and I'm still learning some of it's great features. I'm mapping my favourite Aftershock patches so that it will eventually be the only dirt pedal on my board. It's THAT versatile.
I'm also not sure what you mean by digital sounding? Is it the multiband split thing sounding synthetic? I've managed to pull out some very realistic Muff and Overdrive tones that sound very analogue and organic.
Yesterday I got some free time to work on my basic Overdrive patch for my Ultrawave. It's pretty close to my favourite Bass overdrive of all time: "GMC Bass overdrive" on the Aftershock. For me, mapping this on the Ultrawave is another step close to removing the Aftershock from my board and using the Ultrawave as my sole Dirt pedal. But I have mapped it and here it is: "GMC - Bass Overdrive" for the Ultrawave. It's a fairly low gain overdrive, a nice bit of grit. With lots of useful features. A nice trick with this patch is to pull back the volume on my bass, and punch up the level and grit to compensate. It's very dynamic and versatile. I've set the grit and level to suit my bass...yours will be different, so expect a wee re-dial to get it how you like it.
What I like about the Aftershock is that you can stack two engines in series. So what I've been doing is mapping the Aftershock's mix controls for each channel to a pair of CC knobs on my PC4. This allows me to dial in one or both channels. It's a neat trick and it allows me to select a patch with 2 different engines and mix between them. With my Aftershock's Overdrive patch, I have two identical Bass Tube engines in series. This bumps up the grit and output, but also compresses the dirt to sound super saturated, a bit like a tube amp hitting it's rails. So I wanted to replicate this behaviour on my Ultrawave's patch. So I added a 2nd channel with slightly higher grit settings, kicked on the compressor and dialled in some compression similar to what I was hearing from my Aftershock. I got my 2 tones pretty close and then mapped the Sustain knob to Balance, allowing me to cross fade between the two channels (uncompressed and compressed). It pretty much does what I've been doing with my Aftershock's Overdrive patch. The treble control is default, so that's useful for punching up the brightness (for Synth tones) or dulling it down for retro amp vibes. The nice thing about my Ultrawave's patch is that you don't need external expression or a PC4 to mix the two channels. Everything is accessible from the pedal's 4 knobs.
I just need to do the same for one of my Darkglass / gated Muff patches and a Rat patch.
What I like about the Aftershock is that you can stack two engines in series. So what I've been doing is mapping the Aftershock's mix controls for each channel to a pair of CC knobs on my PC4. This allows me to dial in one or both channels. It's a neat trick and it allows me to select a patch with 2 different engines and mix between them. With my Aftershock's Overdrive patch, I have two identical Bass Tube engines in series. This bumps up the grit and output, but also compresses the dirt to sound super saturated, a bit like a tube amp hitting it's rails. So I wanted to replicate this behaviour on my Ultrawave's patch. So I added a 2nd channel with slightly higher grit settings, kicked on the compressor and dialled in some compression similar to what I was hearing from my Aftershock. I got my 2 tones pretty close and then mapped the Sustain knob to Balance, allowing me to cross fade between the two channels (uncompressed and compressed). It pretty much does what I've been doing with my Aftershock's Overdrive patch. The treble control is default, so that's useful for punching up the brightness (for Synth tones) or dulling it down for retro amp vibes. The nice thing about my Ultrawave's patch is that you don't need external expression or a PC4 to mix the two channels. Everything is accessible from the pedal's 4 knobs.
I just need to do the same for one of my Darkglass / gated Muff patches and a Rat patch.
I'm wondering if anyone has any thoughts between a Collider vs a "Nemesis & Ventris" combo? I really like my Nemesis, but I want to delve back into Source Audio's reverbs. I'm very happy with the verbs and delays from my H9, I'm not look to replace but compliment. I use ambience on my Nemesis a bit, which isn't available on the Collider. However, it's got all those lush verbs like e-Dome instead. I use Analogue a lot, it's such a great analogue delay sound. I use Digital a bit, but I prefer the H9 for that sound. There's a lot of other delay features on the Nemesis that I'm not using and won't miss. So I think what I'm asking is...does anyone find the verbs on the Collider limiting? Are the controls a bit limited or are they a perfect subset? Is it worth the condensed board space?
