Mr Black's Analog Chorus/Vibrato Deluxe offers high-fidelity bucket-brigade modulation in a pedal format
Tap tempo and selectable waveforms make for one hugely configurable modulation station
Mr Black has pulled out all the stops with a new deluxe, fully-featured version of its three-knob Analog Chrorus/Vibrato.
The Analog Chorus/Vibrato Deluxe – or to give it its full name as read on the enclosure, the "Analog Chorus/Vibrato Deluxe High-Fidelity BBD Time Modulator" – welcomes all-new features and controls to the party, with a pure analog-output LFO that can be configured for "tight and crisp" studio chorus effects, through to warm, dark and organic vibrato.
Oh, and you can take it further off the beaten path, should the occasion call for it. Mr Black describes its most extreme settings as "downright 'useless'" – presumably in a good way – with fast speeds and Square waves making for "bleeping and blooping like a broken computer."
There is tap-tempo with real-time LED indicator. You can choose from four different waveforms – Triangle, Square, Sine, Glitch/Random – via the tap-tempo footswitch, and Mr Black entrusts control of all its other features with good old-fashioned dials on the front.
There knobs for Wet/Dry mix, Width and Rate – self-explanatory – with Lag and Shine controls for adding bucket-bridge delay and high-frequency roll-off respectively. And there is plenty of travel on these dials.
Take the Rate control: here you can it from a 16.66Hz to 0.423Hz cycle (mS - 2.36seconds), with the tap tempo allowing for a maximum rate cycle of 0.076Hz. That's 13 seconds! Quite incredible, and, says Mr Black, very cool when you combine it with the Glitch waveform – an effect described as "drunk auto-tune" madness.
The LFO waveforms are digitally controlled but are 100 per cent analogue, as is your signal path.
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Mr Black says the tap-tempo circuit is accurate to 1/5000th of a second, with a maximum drift of just under 20µS. When using the tap-tempo feature the second press of the footswitch starts the waveform at the beginning of its cycle.
The Analog Chorus/Vibrato Deluxe draws ≈62mA of current, is true bypass, and runs on 9V of DC power but can be switched to 18V for extra headroom.
Priced £/$329, the unit is available now. See Mr Black for more details.
Jonathan Horsley has been writing about guitars and guitar culture since 2005, playing them since 1990, and regularly contributes to MusicRadar, Total Guitar and Guitar World. He uses Jazz III nylon picks, 10s during the week, 9s at the weekend, and shamefully still struggles with rhythm figure one of Van Halen’s Panama.
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