Decoratifs — an approximation of a Strymon Deco

No doubt familiar to many of you, the Deco attempts to put the classic recording studio (and its bag of tricks) on a pedal board. This, in turn, is my best attempt to approximate it using a true stereo signal path.

First, a few caveats:

1) This patch uses the non-interpolated delay lines found in firmware version 1.03 (along with the CPU optimization that comes with them). It also makes use of audio balances that were corrected, it seems, by the bug fix in v1.03 (I wasn’t sure from the language if this addressed the specific bug I reported).

2) At present, modulating delay lines is… non-ideal. You may find under certain settings (generally the two extreme ends of the lag time) that large values for the pitch modulation depth produce unpleasant results. I spent… quite a lot of time trying to account for this, but it remains “so-so.” If modulating delay lines becomes less vexing, I will gladly revise this patch.

3) The “tape saturation” side of this took a number of hits in the process of building the patch. In truth, it is nothing more than an OD channel at this point, that blends your clean signal with a (pretty) light “pushed” overdrive. The compressor and tone controls had to be sacrificed, which produced a much more accurate response, but I wanted to include some “saturation” because the harmonics of the overdrive make some of the flanging effects much more pronounced. I may consider a mono signal path version at some future time, which would allow more CPU to be devoted to this aspect.

4) Because of the latency introduced by the complex routing and the fact that, in order to produce through-zero effects the “dry” side is already delayed slightly, you may find that the patch produces a noticeable latency between what you play and what the patch produces.

5) Due to CPU restraints, I was unable to include: tap tempo (hard to do even without CPU restraints, since it would require an entirely separate set of delay lines), the “manual flange” effect of holding down the tape modulation footswitch, and any of the secondary functions.

Okay, doom and gloom out of the way. I’m not going to spend a ton of time on this one, because the chances you’ve come across the Deco are pretty high.

Footswitches:

Left, momentary: switches between sum, invert, and bounce mode. Like the switch on the original, it passes through invert as it moves back and forth from sum to bounce.

Middle, latching: turns on “saturation”/OD.

Right, latching: turns on tape modulation.

Front panel:

…[SA]……………….[LT]….
……………..[LM]……………
……………..[MI][MI]………
…[V]…………….[MD][MR]
[SI]……………………….[MI]

SA = saturation amount. Increasing this mixes your dry signal with the overdrive. As it increases, it also raises the gain of the overdrive (and slightly compensates by reducing output gain, although it is louder, as you would expect, at 100%).

LT = lag time. This controls the lag deck’s position to the reference deck.
0-.251 = the lag deck precedes the reference deck.
.252 = “zero” point as the lag deck and the reference deck operate at the same speed.
.253-.600 (or so) = flanging.
.600-.750 = chorus and double-tracking
.750-.850 = slapback
.850-.932 = echo
.932-1.000 = exceeds the time of the Deco

LM = lag mix. Controls the mix between reference deck and lag deck.

MIs = mode indicators. When only the left light is on, the patch is in sum mode. When both lights are on, the patch is in invert mode. When the right light is on, the patch is in bounce mode.

A quick rundown of the modes:
Sum = the reference deck and lag deck are summed. Modulation/tape effects are produced by the differences in their relative speeds.
Invert = the lag deck is inverted. This somewhat changes the tone of the modulation (making lows more pronounced). With through-zero flanging, the effect is much more pronounced as the signals briefly cancel out.
Bounce = the lag deck is inverted, and its output is fed to the non-inverted side. Produces stereo widening and, at longer speeds, stereo ping pongs as the echo travels from one output to the other.

V = volume (gain control for the output. As this is logarithmic, small adjustments go a long way. By default, set to ~0 dB).

MD = random pitch modulation depth.
MR = random pitch modulation rate. In the original, these controls were linked. I thought about reproducing this, but the flexibility of being able to control the rate is beneficial, especially given the difficulties of finding agreeable pitch modulation in some settings.

SI = saturation indicator. When lit, the saturation channel is active.

LI = lag indicator. When lit, the lag deck is active.

Sound clip:

0:00-0:20–Sum mode. 100% wet, pitch vibrato flanging.
0:20-0:47–The same, but with a 50/50 wet/dry mix.
0:47-1:00–Heavy use of the “saturation” channel in invert mode to produce through-zero flanging effects.
1:00-1:17–Bounce mode. Chorus with light modulation. Mix is about 60/40.
1:17-1:40–Bounce mode. I switch to my neck pickup (bridge is humbucker, neck is P90, so less “hot”) and use some overdrive. Notice the ping pong effect of the echoes.
1:40-1:54–Bounce mode. No modulation, very light (15 ms) delay. Begins with patch bypassed, then on, with about a 55/45 mix. Very nice stereo widening effect.
1:54-2:20–Switch to a Wurlitzer emulation. Invert mode, some OD from the saturation channel, through zero flanging.
2:20-2:46–Rhodes MkI emulation. Using the invert mode, with some light modulation, to produce a slapback that gives the Rhodes a “space” to inhabit.
2:46-3:03–Wurlitzer again, with a stereo chorus using the bounce mode.

4 comments on “Decoratifs — an approximation of a Strymon Deco
  • p1afff on said:

    Will try very soon. Deco is full of subtleties, very difficult to “emulate”. They have multi band distorsion, and of course the code is fully optimised to this sole task….
    But your sound examples sound promising, and even if it’s not Deco, if it sounds good then…who cares :-)

  • MARCUS_SYNTAR on said:

    This patch seems to be uncommonly sensitive to hot signals? Playing around on my digital keyboard, scrolling through different patches on the Zoia. When I get to this one, I get some sort of digital distorsion, like it’s clipping. Definitly not there on purpose. Is there something I can change to get rid of it? I really need to lower my digital piano to a minimum for the noise to go away. I really want to use this patch! It sounds great when it’s not making noises.

  • MARCUS_SYNTAR on said:

    Oops, I think the fault was in my own system! I wish I’d never made that last comment! Haha. This patch is sooo wonderful! I really mean it. So fun to play around with the different parameters.

  • Christopher H. M. Jacques on said:

    Decoratifs V 1.1

    This is a relatively minor update. Basically, I removed a few things so that it doesn’t bug out the CPU; they should not affect the sound too much.

    I also labeled the controls. The Mode Indicator works a little differently than it did in the previous version; a UI button changes colors. I’m using 1.10, with the expanded color set, so to me, they look like they go from orange to blue to white; in previous firmwares, I believe it would look like it goes from green to magenta to white. The first is still “normal,” the second is still “inverted,” and the third is still “bounce.”

    I also changed the overdrive from “pushed” to “classic,” because as I played around with the patch during revision, I found the “pushed” too dark for my tastes. I also minorly tweaked the output gain.

    A special thanks to my patrons on Patreon for their support: Rob Flax, Stepan Grammatik, brockstar, Mats Unnerholm, D Sing, Will Scott, drew batchelor, Miguel, Steve Bragg, Joab Eastley, Tomi Kokki, Mitch Lantz, Ben Norland, Roman Jakobej, Mark Crosbie, Steve Codling, Timothy Cleary, Soren Made, Ken Luke, Mike Ryan, Vilis Klavins, Nick, Joseph August, Jonathan Carp, Liam Britten, Nick Ruck, Simon Provencher, Alec Fellman, Ben Cerezo, Rick Munro, and Pierre Martin!

    If you would like to support my work on ZOIA, please visit patreon.com/chmjacques

  • Leave a Reply

    • Platform:
    • Category: Effect
    • Revision: 1.1 -- See comment
    • License: Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike 4.0
    • Modified: 4 years ago
    • Views: 1454
      Likes: 28
      Downloads: 2992
    Download
    Chat