REQ: Rhythmic Robot Audio FadeWheel
Two Tonewheel and one Transistor components, blendable for a wide spectrum of sounds from smooth and simple to harmonically complex.
We’re big fans of tonewheel organs here in the lab – there’s something about that classic electromechanical swirl that just gets us in our gut – but our single biggest complaint about the otherwise great emulations currently on the market is that they all sound a bit clean. We always end up going to significant amounts of effort to get some real dirt and warmth going, and even then, sometimes the results aren’t as grungy as we’d like. Real tonewheel machines have history; they have a past; sometimes that past is pretty sordid and grimy. So why do the organ sims sound so shiny and new? What we need is organs with a bit of character.
FadeWheel takes that mission and runs with it. At its heart is a simple but versatile three-waveform organ engine, with two Hammond B3-type dials and a Vox dial. We chose these very carefully so that combining them yields a surprisingly wide spectrum of sounds. B3 1 gets you a pure, simple, fundamental-only B3 tone (based on an 808000 patch, for Hammondheads among you). B3 2 adds some nice harmonic overtones courtesy of the last three drawbars. And Vox is really fun: this is where you go for upper harmonic content, and pushing it can get pretty dissonant if you want. Plus, its transistor tone complements the tonewheel dials nicely.
We’re big fans of tonewheel organs here in the lab – there’s something about that classic electromechanical swirl that just gets us in our gut – but our single biggest complaint about the otherwise great emulations currently on the market is that they all sound a bit clean. We always end up going to significant amounts of effort to get some real dirt and warmth going, and even then, sometimes the results aren’t as grungy as we’d like. Real tonewheel machines have history; they have a past; sometimes that past is pretty sordid and grimy. So why do the organ sims sound so shiny and new? What we need is organs with a bit of character.
FadeWheel takes that mission and runs with it. At its heart is a simple but versatile three-waveform organ engine, with two Hammond B3-type dials and a Vox dial. We chose these very carefully so that combining them yields a surprisingly wide spectrum of sounds. B3 1 gets you a pure, simple, fundamental-only B3 tone (based on an 808000 patch, for Hammondheads among you). B3 2 adds some nice harmonic overtones courtesy of the last three drawbars. And Vox is really fun: this is where you go for upper harmonic content, and pushing it can get pretty dissonant if you want. Plus, its transistor tone complements the tonewheel dials nicely.