Good Distortion for Synths

[teknosmoker]

I'm looking to beef up the sound of various outboard synths (analog & digital) with some distortion, helping them to cut through a mix. I've played with various digital effects/plugin distortions such as Izotope Trash (not too bad), TC Fireworx, Ensoniq DP4+, etc., but haven't been terribly impressed with any of them.



I've also tried overdriving various analog hardware like: JoeMeek pre's, crappy Mackie pre's, Moogerfooger pedals (OK for some stuff, but can be a little too creamy for other stuff - like leads), Frostwave Resonator (does the trick once in a while).



What good distortion has anyone used for this purpose? Flexibility and the ability to attain an aggresive sound, while retaining the some definition/character of the original are key.



Any thoughts or ideas?

[horseface]

Originally Posted by teknosmoker

I'm looking to beef up the sound of various outboard synths (analog & digital) with some distortion, helping them to cut through a mix. I've played with various digital effects/plugin distortions such as Izotope Trash (not too bad), TC Fireworx, Ensoniq DP4+, etc., but haven't been terribly impressed with any of them.



I've also tried overdriving various analog hardware like: JoeMeek pre's, crappy Mackie pre's, Moogerfooger pedals (OK for some stuff, but can be a little too creamy for other stuff - like leads), Frostwave Resonator (does the trick once in a while).



What good distortion has anyone used for this purpose? Flexibility and the ability to attain an aggresive sound, while retaining the some definition/character of the original are key.



Any thoughts or ideas?

Crunch, by Chris Reed is a nice distortion plugin. Very aggressive.

To retain the sound of the original, I'd blend an effected version of the sound back in with the original...

You could also try what I use as a standby for nice synth distortion:



I can make things SCREAM with that.

[teknosmoker]

"Crunch, by Chris Reed is a nice distortion plugin. Very aggressive.

To retain the sound of the original, I'd blend an effected version of the sound back in with the original..."


Thanks for the feedback.

I've heard good things about Chris Reed's Crunch (and it was freeware!). Unfortunately Roland got pissed off at the "slight similarities" between Crunch and their distortion pedal and sent him a cease & desist order, forcing him to pull it from his site. Know anywhere that I could still find a copy to try out......




.....So you're pretty happy with the Roland stomp box for distortion? I tried a Big Muff pedal a while back and it was just too fuzzy for what I was looking for (sounded great on guitar though). Would the Roland impart an agressive & beefy character to a 1 osc. synth like say, an SH101?

[robd]

I don't own one, but I got to try one once, and the technosaurus effexon is a really truly incredible "nice" distortion. It is very controllable and has a really pleasant sound. Unfortunately, i don't think they are making them right now. I have been looking for one for a long time. I heard they might start making them again in the future, though. If you see one for sale, jump on it.

On a totally different note, I just got an effector 13 synth mangler. It is definitely not pretty, but it is extremely versatile in the range of not pretty sounds it can get. It has tow distortion/ fuzzes in sequence. you can just use one of you want to, though. They are identical, and each has a hiss switch and a chaos switch, both of which completely change the character. Also, hiss before chaos sounds totally different than chaos before hiss, so there is a lot of combnations. The best part is, you can control the distortion amount of both the fuzzes with a joystick. one is on the x-axis, the other on the y. I really really love this thing, but it's probably not what you're looking for if you want to be able to recognize your input signal at all at the end. Personally, I seldom look to electronics to make pretty, pleasant sounds anyway. I play a lot of acoustic instruments, and I can get pretty sounds out of any of them if I'm in the mood.

[mikecook]

Ohmforce make a really sweet multiband distortion plugin called Predatohm.

[r0ck1r0ck2]

always liked the MetalZone on synths..

i'm sure you could go more slut...but what the hell...

parametric mid seems to work...

but of course the whole rig was going threw a boost and then into two ****ED UP old tube amps..

sounded great.

[Ruudman]

Jules, duplicated threads

...not complaining about the posts though

ruudman

[Tetness]

Check out THE CULTURE VULTURE.

[Justynfromnz]

sans amp...funny old one with little white jumper switches....pretty cool....or if you have a friend with a jcm 800 , they have a di out on the back, and thats pretty cool...although i've only tried that with live bass....not synths.

[Mike Tholen]

You might wabt to check out a Sherman Filterbank.
http://www.sherman.be/

[Mr Generic]

Overdriving the desk input works well for some sounds- I used to do it with the kick all the time. The desk EQ then "tunes" the distortion. It depends on the desk though- a mackie pre doesn't work, it just fuzzes.

[robd]

I have heard a few people use sansamps on guitars, and they always sounded nice. I have used their bass DI myself, and it sounded fine, but I didn't really use the distortion.
The Sherman filterbank rocks insanely, and has a nice distortion. I am going to order one of my very own as soon as I get payed on wednesday.

[Justynfromnz]

yeah, you can kinda put a sans amp on anything and it will do "something" kinda cool...maybe not what you're initially looking for but still fun. they're cool on drums ala tchad blake...I saw a friend of mine send a kick to one then turn the return sound into kinda a flabby kik skin....then mix that back in. that was cool. But I have used them on a ms-20 and a 106 with pretty sweet results...

[majool]

Doepfer makes some cool mods that are easy to distort.
Love my Drawmer 1969 tube DI on certain stuff (bass and sometimes leads).

[Bob Ross]

I've used SansAmp GT2, ProCo Rat, and an Intersound IVP (rackmount instrument preamp w/ faux "Tube" circuit from late 1970's) all to excellent effect on synths.

[u b k]

great river mpnv DI, phoenix drs DI, api preamp, tape.


gregoire
del
ubk
.

[AdamJay]

Originally Posted by u b i k

great river mpnv DI, phoenix drs DI, api preamp, tape.


gregoire
del
ubk
.

actually, i'd go through the pre on the Phoenix DRS for that transformerless sound.
cranked to 70dB and brought down with the fader....

mmmmm... gooooey.

[esaias]

H & K Tubefactor and Rotosphere are my favourite synth & drummachine efx boxes

-Tomi

[robd]

I got my sherman a while back and the overdrive on the input sounds great. Also, for monoleads, running my ion oscs without the ion filters through it in full unison screams.

[JSt0rm]

I remember there was this rumour about running tr909 hats thru a mackie pre and distorting the piss out of it but I tried tried distorting a mackie pre and I thought it sounded WAY to crunchy I couldn't find any spot after the redline that it just didnt sound like a overloaded channel strip.

I have a el fatso and it adds a good distortion thru overload. I aso have a speck model ssm analog mixer and let me tell you the overload on this NEVER gets too crunchy. Amazing headroom. The distortion from the channel strips is softer then the mackie channel strips or probably any cheap mixer. It has its own character for sure. I was a pleasent surprise because I wans't really looking for that. Right now I am maxing out a machinedrum max trim into the strip and it still sound fine eh. Its crunched but in that good way.

Here its sunday and I had some free time so I made 2 drum loops with distortion from the ssm and from the fatso. I maxed out the gain stages of each piece to show its level of distortion.

With the fatso I did turn on the tranny but the compression is off. Now as max levels the compressor still kicks in a bit and so does the "warmth" but thats just the piece.

I didn't use the fatso in the ssm demo but I of course used the ssm in the fatso demo. The ssm trim was set to a level right before distortion so it was using the most headroom.

I did this to see the difference in distortion. Now as to what sounds best its all so subjective that we can't really say but the fatso is $1900 and I payed $800 for my speck model ssm with expander. So quick math says 800/56= $14.29 a channel vs 1900/2 = $950 a channel

[dlmorley]

Sherman Filterbank
Driving the desk hard can work too (depending on the desk!)

[riecespieces]

When used sparsely altho its free Camel Phat does a good job of distortion but to each his own

[esaias]

Originally Posted by dlmorley

Driving the desk hard can work too (depending on the desk!)

The one and only for this: BOSS BX-series
If you're doing techno/acid etc. stuff, you have to have BX-8

-Tomi

[teknosmoker]

Great suggestions everyone.

So far, I've tried a SansAmp, ProCo Rat, MetalZone and just about every plugin known to man. Each of the stompboxes proved useful in certain applications, though I found none of them to be extremely versatile. I really don't care for digital distortion (both hardware and plugins). Driving the pre's on my console results in a mess (Mackie 32.8.......i know, i know...).

Although the Great River, Phoenix, EL, Thermionic, etc.. pieces can do much more than a distortion unit, I cannot afford one of them right now (I'm trying to stay around the $600 USD range).

I'd like to try out the Sherman Filterbank on some of my own audio sources before purchasing one. Unfortunately they're pretty hard to find in the United States -- none of my local dealers carry them , so my only option is online purchase.



@ dlmorley & robd -- Would you say that the Filterbank can produce a very diverse range of distortion color..........or does a Sherman simply sound like a Sherman?



-T

[deadhorses]

Sherman Filterbank hands down! It’s the king of stomp! Pricey but depends on how much you want to go with the tone. The other two would be Bomb Factory’s Sansamp PSA 1 Plug in. It's cheap and warm tone sounding crunch or GRM Tools Plug ins bundle, It's great for sound design.


I own a Filterbank , you wouldn’t be disappointed!

http://www.sherman.be/

[taturana]

i remember reading an old tony banks interview... i think he used a rat distortion... so i guess you might wanna check some solid state dist boxes... '

i think tube based dist or tube screamer for example is a bit too dark for that app, but your mileage can and will vary... big muff is great for bass sounds...

amp distortion is always helpful.... miking it jan hammer style...

some bass distortion pedals can be very good too...

digital distortion or modeling isn't as cool as a 50-100 dollar pedal... i f you want to spend more get a bunch of them... since i play guitar and keyboards, i have been collecting them for a while...

another really good pedal mxr m-151, that has two channel presets and a good 3 band eq on each... and is very versatile...
you can distort your pre input, slash your amps speakers kinks style... and so on....

if you get one good fuzz box, one good distortion and one good overdrive pedal you're covered for a lot of things...

[Luko]

I'll never forget the first time i heard a 303 pumped thru a Metal Zone

[vixapphire]

Originally Posted by majool

Love my Drawmer 1969 tube DI on certain stuff (bass and sometimes leads).

i'll second that. what it does to digital VA synths is beyond heavenly!

[robd]

The sherman is a lot more than a distortion. It is basically a badass monosynth sans oscillators. As far as the ditortion goes, it is all contolled by the input knob, but it sounds idfferent at different levels. It also has a high boost/high cut switch that changes the sound, and it has a pad/sensitive trigger switch so you can get any distortion level at any volume level. The filters certainly interact with the distortion to produce a wide variety of sounds, but I honestly havn't spent that much time with just the distortion. It sounds nice though. I have an ion, which is a nice, but not particualrly ballsy synth, but it screams when I run the oscs through the filterbank.

There are probably some mail order places that will let you return it if you don't like it, though I don't think that's very likely with the sherman. I've had min for a couple months, and I'm only beginning to get a handle on what it can do. If you can't find a place that has a good return policy, and you have access to some server you could use to upload files, you could send some of your sounds to me, and I would be happy to run them through just the distortion at a variety of representative settings and send them back to you. I could really only do this for just the distortion though, as once you add in the filters and the modulation it has far too many possibilities to do any kind of effective demo. It will take you months to really get a feel for it.

[dlmorley]

I had the prototype filter bank in my Serge system! The guy who builds the Filterbank (Herman) is an old friend and when he set out to build the Sherman, it was for himself. He didn't aim it at a market or anything, he just built it how he wanted it for his studio and decided others might like the same thing.
In any case, I think all the above is true. It is a synth minus oscillators. It's a HEAVY machine and you can do a multitude of things with it, but it is always a fat bastard and not for clean stuff...
I don't recall him having anyone want to return the filterbank and he has sold a LOT. You don't see that many on ebay either, which considering how many he has built, is a sign that people keep them.
I just wish he would bring out a new product. I must call him and pester him!