Hi All,
For those of you that are not members of "Charlie Hall and Friends" or those that are not aware, Charlie Hall has teamed up with John Collins (JCvintage) and for the past year have been developing a new effects unit. Those of you that use EFTP patches will know how good they are. Although this unit is still a few months away (and no price has been decided), and no demos are available yet, the unit made an appearance at a "get-together" and was extremely well received, so much so, that numbers of interested people are being collated on Charlie's forum.
Obviously, having got the "sounds" (which is being compared with the Meazzi echo unit), the next most important thing is the price, and Charlie has promised that the price will not be "mega mega bucks".
Full details as described by Charlie are -
About a year ago I teamed up with JCvintage (John Collins) to develop a totally new digital echo pedal with an analogue preamp, powered by a separate AC adaptor. The dry signal is analogue from beginning to end, and only the echo signal is processed digitally.
The dry signal has the same frequency response and harmonic generation of the Meazzi Echomatic 2 regardless of the echo patch selected, even when the effect is switched off, so that the favourite benchmark dry tone is preserved at all times, making it easier to set amp controls and other tone settings.
The input impedance is the same as a Meazzi Echomatic 2 at 470Kohms, and the output impedance is low enough to retain a good quality signal when a long output signal cable is used.
Patches will be pre-programmed during manufacture so they can never be lost, and are selected by an up footswitch or a down footswitch. A third footswitch turns the echo effect off or on, with an LED light indicating when the echo effect is on.
An LCD display shows details of the selected patch. Fast cycling from one patch to another is possible by holding either footswitch down. At power up, the unit recalls the last selected patch.
Five rotary controls can be adjusted at any time by the user, even when the unit is not powered up if so desired. These controls are for dry level, echo drive level, echo output level, feedback, and wow and flutter. Setting all the controls to a single suggested setting will give the basic intended sound from each program patch so it is possible to use the unit and never have to touch the controls other than to ensure that they are set as required to begin with. Control settings to tailor the sound in real time to suit the player, the guitar, and the acoustics of the hall or room will affect all patches continually as the controls are never over-ridden by patch settings. The controls provide sufficient user adjustment to customise the sound in much the same way as the original echo units being replicated.
The preamp is all solid state but with the triode characteristics of valves such as the ECC83/12AX7 and replicates all of the effects of the earthed or grounded cathode valve circuits and cathode follower output circuits used in Meazzi echo units. Tests show practically identical results to the equivalent valve circuits, with soft clipping, generation of lower order harmonics that increase in the correct varying proportions with increasing signal levels, bias shifting due to capacitor coupling, and output resistance characteristics (the equivalent of anode or plate resistance). The typical triode curves published by the valve manufacturers are produced by these solid state circuits under the equivalent test conditions.
With no valves to wear out, the worry of a replacement valve altering the intended sound is eliminated. The circuit runs at much lower voltages, simplifying the power supply design, and at far lower cost.
John is developing the programming code for the echoes with much input from me. We are still writing program patches and beginning to make arrangements for manufacture.
Details include accurate overall recording and playback frequency responses, accurate simulation of the effects of mismatched/misaligned playback heads detected in Hank's Echomatic 2, an analogue drive circuit with accurate magnetic oxide overload characteristics that take into account varying levels of distortion according to frequency response, accurate feedback characteristics, and accurate wow characteristics calculated from measurements of the mechanical parts of a real Echomatic 2. We found that the mass of the drum in a drum echo unit could not have tape flutter in the same way as the flexible thin tape of a tape unit. The sum of the wow components accurately reproduce all of the required Echomatic 2 pitch variations as far as “that sound” is concerned. Because the pitch variation components are programmed into the patches, the wow (and flutter where applicable) will be set correctly for any echo unit programmed.
Other patches are for the Meazzi Echomatic 1 and while some of these were demonstrated at the Get Together, more programming work is required to fine tune and perfect them all. Yet to be programmed are the Roland RE301, Vox Long Tom, and others. All the echoes will be in mono, just as vintage echo units always were.
We hope to have the unit in production in the next few months. The selling price is not yet known.
The prototype is not the final intended case design, so pics are not being shown until the case design has been fixed.
Read more: http://charliehall.proboards.com/index. ... z1OwpvZWZD
and added info from John Collins -
About a year ago I teamed up with JCvintage (John Collins) to develop a totally new digital echo pedal with an analogue preamp, powered by a separate AC adaptor. The dry signal is analogue from beginning to end, and only the echo signal is processed digitally.
The dry signal has the same frequency response and harmonic generation of the Meazzi Echomatic 2 regardless of the echo patch selected, even when the effect is switched off, so that the favourite benchmark dry tone is preserved at all times, making it easier to set amp controls and other tone settings.
The input impedance is the same as a Meazzi Echomatic 2 at 470Kohms, and the output impedance is low enough to retain a good quality signal when a long output signal cable is used.
Patches will be pre-programmed during manufacture so they can never be lost, and are selected by an up footswitch or a down footswitch. A third footswitch turns the echo effect off or on, with an LED light indicating when the echo effect is on.
An LCD display shows details of the selected patch. Fast cycling from one patch to another is possible by holding either footswitch down. At power up, the unit recalls the last selected patch.
Five rotary controls can be adjusted at any time by the user, even when the unit is not powered up if so desired. These controls are for dry level, echo drive level, echo output level, feedback, and wow and flutter. Setting all the controls to a single suggested setting will give the basic intended sound from each program patch so it is possible to use the unit and never have to touch the controls other than to ensure that they are set as required to begin with. Control settings to tailor the sound in real time to suit the player, the guitar, and the acoustics of the hall or room will affect all patches continually as the controls are never over-ridden by patch settings. The controls provide sufficient user adjustment to customise the sound in much the same way as the original echo units being replicated.
The preamp is all solid state but with the triode characteristics of valves such as the ECC83/12AX7 and replicates all of the effects of the earthed or grounded cathode valve circuits and cathode follower output circuits used in Meazzi echo units. Tests show practically identical results to the equivalent valve circuits, with soft clipping, generation of lower order harmonics that increase in the correct varying proportions with increasing signal levels, bias shifting due to capacitor coupling, and output resistance characteristics (the equivalent of anode or plate resistance). The typical triode curves published by the valve manufacturers are produced by these solid state circuits under the equivalent test conditions.
With no valves to wear out, the worry of a replacement valve altering the intended sound is eliminated. The circuit runs at much lower voltages, simplifying the power supply design, and at far lower cost.
John is developing the programming code for the echoes with much input from me. We are still writing program patches and beginning to make arrangements for manufacture.
Details include accurate overall recording and playback frequency responses, accurate simulation of the effects of mismatched/misaligned playback heads detected in Hank's Echomatic 2, an analogue drive circuit with accurate magnetic oxide overload characteristics that take into account varying levels of distortion according to frequency response, accurate feedback characteristics, and accurate wow characteristics calculated from measurements of the mechanical parts of a real Echomatic 2. We found that the mass of the drum in a drum echo unit could not have tape flutter in the same way as the flexible thin tape of a tape unit. The sum of the wow components accurately reproduce all of the required Echomatic 2 pitch variations as far as “that sound” is concerned. Because the pitch variation components are programmed into the patches, the wow (and flutter where applicable) will be set correctly for any echo unit programmed.
Other patches are for the Meazzi Echomatic 1 and while some of these were demonstrated at the Get Together, more programming work is required to fine tune and perfect them all. Yet to be programmed are the Roland RE301, Vox Long Tom, and others. All the echoes will be in mono, just as vintage echo units always were.
We hope to have the unit in production in the next few months. The selling price is not yet known.
The prototype is not the final intended case design, so pics are not being shown until the case design has been fixed.
Read more: http://charliehall.proboards.com/index. ... z1OwpvZWZD
Hope this may be of interest.
Regards
Brian