A fun take on harmonic vibrato and spring reverb of a popular guitar amplifier from the 1960s. Also synchronizes tremolo speed/rate with external MIDI clock.
Harmonic Vibrato: The incoming signal gets split up into a high- and a low-passed signal, modulated by two identical but 180° out-of-phase LFOs and then added together again.
To further modernize the whole thing, with version 0.5 it is now also possible to synchronize the tremolo speed/rate with an external MIDI clock for maximum accuracy.
Spring Reverb: An impulse response is the closest thing to a real deal spring reverb unit. I might add some samples of spring-splashes to simulate kicking the unit, somewhen in the future.
In case you want to use your own impulse response – which you should as I haven’t given away my best ones with this patch ;) – follow the directions in the “convolution.pd” file included in the patch.
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Based on David Morrin’s circuit details. https://sites.google.com/a/davidmorrin.com/www/home/trouble/trouble-amps/fender-harmonic-vibrato
partconv~ written by Ben Saylor.
The impulse response used here has been taken from Tony Dubshot’s excellent “60 Classic and King Tubby style spring reverb impulse
responses for convolution reverb” package, available for free download here:
http://dubshot.blogspot.com/2008/10/free-download-60-classic-and-king-tubby.html
Thank you @element-s for the useful hints in your comments and PMs!
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Controls:
Aux/Footswitch: Tremolo/Bypass
Knob 1: Tremolo Speed 0,33-14 Hz or 1/2 dotted to 1/32 (when MIDI clock sync is enabled)
Knob 2: Tremolo Depth (0-100%)
Knob 3: Reverb Sustain (500-6944 ms)
Knob 4: Reverb Mix (1-100%) – Dry/Wet
C#3: Toggle MIDI clock sync: LED color changes to cyan when tremolo is activated. Cyan flashing LED when clock is detected, static cyan LED when MIDI clock sync is armed but no active clock is found. Knob1 changes options from Hz values of 0.33-14 Hz to 1/2 dotted-1/32 note lengths. Press again to switch back to non-synced mode, Knob1 values will change back to Hz/BPM options as well. Last state before the switch will be saved and restored.
D#3: Hz/BPM display of speed/rate (works only if MIDI clock sync is not toggled)
C#4, D#4, F#4, G#4, A#4: Reverb Tone (500-2000 hz hi-pass filter presets)
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Changelog:
0.6 Removed amplitude-triggered filter envelope for convolution reverb.
0.5 Sync tremolo speed to external MIDI clock (supported rates from 1/2. to 1/32), reduced tone presets from 10 to 5, added Hz/BPM conversion for display
0.4 Added Spring reverb, another license change due to the use of the partconv~ object, released under GPL-2 in 2005.
0.3 Updated frequency range to late 1960s Fender Super Reverb specs: 0.33 Hz – 14 Hz according to ChatGPT (not sure if it’s actually true).
0.2 Added blinking LED as visual reference for tremolo speed. Code cleanup. Change to BSD-3 license.
0.1 Initial release
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Very very good. Much better than the Strymon Flint take on that trem.
The difficult part is spring reverb modelling. Ive been onto it for a while but hard to fins good papers on it.
@element-s: Thank you and I agree! I find reverb in Pd generally difficult and haven’t found one yet that meets my needs. In Ableton Live I work a lot with Impulse Responses from old Fender Spring Reverbs and the result is insanely good. Are there any Pd IR implementations at all and would the Organelle or a Raspberry Pi 3B even have the processing power for it?
There is a colnvolver or two for PD and the load seems fine on the Organelle and Raspberry. I think One of the patches on the PatchStorage demos that and I have tried sring IRs and they are great and you can even push to trigger the twang, if you can get the dynamics. I have been interested lately in the Pescadoro and the GOlden Era pedals giving that 1950s Jazz sound. Its all possible on the Organelle. Great work!
Oh man… I didn’t even remotely think to look for a convolution reverb on patchstorage… Thanks for the hint. My original idea was to combine spring reverb and tremolo in one patch. I might do this whenever I find the time for it. I’ve never heard of the Pescadoro until now either. Very cool! Thanks for opening another can of worms for me… :)
↓↓ Reverb Tone Presets ↓↓
Attachment IMG_3013-6454e94d1a006-scaled.jpg
Exellent work!
To further modernize the whole thing, with version 0.5 it is now also possible to synchronize the tremolo speed/rate with an external MIDI clock for maximum accuracy. Check above and description for updated controls.
Attachment brownie_0-64e0fb1e05aa5..5_controls.png
Thank you for this wonderfull patch! Is it normal that when increase my playing from very soft to loud the reverb seems to skip/reload/restart? It seems like there is some threshold that makes this happen once passed. P.S. The trem alone is worth it !
Hey bubberfrog! Thanks for the kind words and the valuable feedback. There‘s indeed an amplitude threshold which triggers attack and release of the reverb and of course I wasn’t testing it with soft/hard playing… In the end the attack trigger doesn‘t make much sense here at all. I will fix this later when back home.
Excellent update. Thanks for the time put in! Lovely tone.
@element-s
@bubberfrog
Thank you so much, I am very happy that this patch gets so much praise. It was by the way the very first Pd patch I ever wrote and it’s fun to keep improving it and learn more stuff.
Speaking of that: 0.6 has been uploaded. I have removed the amplitude-triggered filter envelope for the convolution reverb – now both soft and loud audio signals get passed through it. I only tested it quickly with my bass guitar and it works fine for me. Please let me know in case any more odd issues pop up.
Thank you, enjoy!
@twang69
Well, this patch makes it easier to just leave my katana mini at home and just take the organelle to the park for some noodling. Perfection in simplicity. I tested the new upload and it works like a charm. Stable peformance and no more threshold skip. Thank you very much for indulging me! Btw: Love your other patches too. Pocket Bateria is it’s own kind of awesome. So good!
Thanks again for a great update!