This is absolutely GLORIOUS. Solid choices as well. Tricerachorus has dedicated detune section that can do the +/- stereo microshift thing on top of tri-chorus so it's a great "instant 80's" box.
Too bad he didn't want to buy those rack units 😂. I saw a YT video by a guy from down under who did the same thing with rack gear. That was GLORIOUS. But I can't quite remember if he already has the Eventide. Recently I was looking for the Eclipse, but even those are pretty expensive. But I found a GSP2101 with the expansion board for a low price. Should arrive on monday. In contrast to the “purple monster”, you have the ability to route everything manually, so you can do parallel inside of the unit. Have to see if it's good enough for an authentic 80's tone. Tried it on the GSP1101, but although you can do parallel, you don't have enough options to shape the sounds of the reverb and delay 😢.
RJ: This is an amazingly informative video that doesn’t feel like I’m being sold something. RUclips needs more of this and not a straight up product ad. Thank you.
I'm supposed to be working on my home gym setup but I find this fascinating and now all my productivity has ground to a halt. I love this guitar sound.
This may be one of my favorite episodes of any show ever. 80’s rack tones, RJs sweet playing, and the mentioning of my favorite guitarist, Dann Huff (such a legendary player). Will be watching this often and working on my own 80’s pedalboard now. Sorry babe !😅
These are my favorite tones. I actually have a huge Bradshaw rack unit with a 2290 and Lexicon racks and all that for my Floyd act - but it’s so big that it mostly stays in storage when I’m not on tour. This pedalboard solution seems much more useable!
Thanks for the shout out RJ! Sounds great! The MVP here on those diagrams is Kjetil Nesheim (Kan Lyd) in Norway. He provided those to me, but I’m sure he’d love the idea of more folks understanding this signal path by way of your rig build and breakdown! Well done!
I never get tired of that 80's Tri-Chorus/rack tone. It's as pleasing to me as a Fender Rhodes . . . great job with this. Check out the Red Seven Lil Wave Tri Chorus or the Free the Tone Tri Avatar = both incredible for this. oNe LovE from NYC
Brilliant demo, your translation of the BB rigs and diagrams into an actual pedalboard that is accessible to working guitarists is a stroke of genius. And the real revelation for me was using the EQ pedal 'trick' after the compressor to put frequencies back that can get hollowed out. Will be getting an Equator to fix this potential issue.
I enjoyed this. The tones here are where my ears set. I love it. I heard so so many songs in you just going through the pedals and demoing them. Blessings to you.
Dude, Keeley's Dyno My Roto is the ultimate 3D mono chorus and it's perfect for the dyno Rhodes sound, as well as Cyndi Lauper, Crowded House, etc. (it also does a very nice Leslie and something called Rotoflange) Betwixt that and the TC SCF Gold+ I have mono and stereo '80s chorus and flange sounds covered. (the analog TC Gold also does pitch modulation) My '80s compressor is a vintage TC Sustain+Para EQ. The EQ is one band, but it's the right one. I generally run the pitch, chorus and delay FX after the cabsim, as though I were miking the amp in a studio and using rack effects on a line level signal. Speaking of delays, my TC Nova Repeater does the stuff you'd get from a TC 2290; the hi and lo inputs mean it can handle instrument or line level signals. A Flamma cab offers stereo cab sim and a Korg SDD 3000 delay does the U2-type stereo stuff that requires stereo/dual mono I/O, or if I'm going for a more rhythmic delay thing, more Gilmour than the Edge, a Vox Delaylab.
Having grown up as a musician in the 80's, it's fun to see people now strive for tones that were pretty standard back then (standard AWESOMENESS, mind you, but that sound was everywhere). I still have my "refrigerator" rack, but now it holds outboard gear in my studio. Players today can get these tones with far less back injuries than we sustained, luckily for them!
This is a great board build. One of the more interesting I've ever seen! Thanks for showcasing and sharing. The pitch detune in tandem with the tri-chorus makes for THE sound. Great video!
7 месяцев назад+1
Great video RJ-you have unlocked the 80's studio-sound mystery. I could have used it 40 years ago, but I guess now will have to do. Thx.
@rjronquillo full disclosure I'm a 63 yr old punk blues guy that back in that area I hated the chorus rack sound. As I have aged and dived back into songs that were not in my wheelhouse I have become a fan of your explorations into those 80's hits sounds. Damn it man!!!! Now I'm a 80's chorus fan and it is amazing. Thanks for being a true historian and opening up my ears.
Ever since you posted your original video using the UAD virtual effects rig, I have gone all-in building the real deal. Almost $10k in retrospect, this pedal based solution is probably the way to go. Awesome knowledge, thanks for sharing.
This board is insane. I still have a Digitech multi effects rack I inherited from a friend who stopped playing in the 90s. I'll have to try it out again.
Decades ago, when I was a really ignorant young lad, I just loved these sounds. Ironically, and accurately, though I knew absolutely nothing about gear back then, I somehow knew instinctively that these sounds could only be possible with a ton of quality gear. So I came to call these kinds of tones the "really expensive" sounds. XD Guess I was right after all. Nice part is that, decades later, yes, you can mimic these sounds like RJ has, but you can also come reasonably close with some patient tweaking in many modern mfx units like Helix, GT1000, etc, etc, etc... GREAT VID RJ! Happy 2024 to you and yours....
Very nice RJ !! The 80's tone is so lush and tasty. I've set up a few different 80's sounds on my rig and love them. It's a must to have it stereo too !! Cheers bro.
For getting closer to the Tri stereo chorus sound with a pedal, i personally would recommend either the red seven The lil'wave (i have one i lent to a friend) but it's not truly stereo, its a mono chorus, so when i compare to my TSC in rack, its nice but the stereo image isnt as intense. The next thing i consider EXTREMELY close to my TSC, is Free the Tone's Tri Avatar chorus, a friend bought one after turning crazy playing on my rack and seeing prices of songbird and other TSCs going nuts and playing them side by side, it was creally a close one, it have truly 3 chorus in it (L, L+R and R) AND a 4th dry signal. Maybe a tad more depth on my TSC but it could also be because of the age of the unit and it's components, the quality of my rack's signal path (i made all the cable by myself with a huge bobin of Klotz and hi-gon/neutrik jacks), no idea. But definitely my N⁰1 recommend to get that TSC sound in a pedal, in stereo, would be the tri avatar. The rest is pale imho.
@ WETTERBOX: really good sounds and ideas in this video! I also own a Wetterbox and found the happy accident that two 100% wet signals sound so good mixed togehter interesting. The Wetterbox does not transmit a dry signal to the outputs if both send/returns are connected. Only a "Electro Harmonix Switchblade Pro", or the "GFI System Duophony Parallel Blender", for example, offers that.
Very cool! Nice work! Great to see you actually having a clean tone vs the light crunch you normally call “clean’! Next thing I think would be cool would be doing the classic 80s and 90s Nashville sound in a board!
Thanks for this, R.J.! I've been waiting for this ever since you did the plugin version. Despite seeing that diagram before, putting the delay(s) after the reverb/wetter box never occurred to me. Very cool! Also, as you said, the great thing about the Tricerachorus is that it does the Tri-Chorus thing AND the detune thing, and you can dial in amounts for both. Saved me some real estate on my 80's-inspired board.
It's not lost on me that even your guitar strap is from back in the day. I bought these for all my guitars after our drummer dropped my guitar player's strat on the parking lot while taking a break from band practice.
Boss is good I like Boss electronics, but damn Eventide makes some kickass effects, that chorus is over the top. If I recall Vai's Passion and Warfare album was done with Eventide Processors.
After seeing you mention the Dimension C/SDD-320, I went down a rabbit hole to see what songs used it, and saw that someone posted Cocteau Twin's Cherry Coloured Funk. After thinking about it, the Dimension C with some lush, ambient reverb is basically the entire sound of the Cocteau Twins. I think that's a good reference for the sound.
Robin Guthrie at some point came to prefer Lexicon racks for Micropitch (at +/-10 cents). He also preferred stacked delays to reverbs, although he may have made exceptions for 2000s collabs with Harold Budd. I would not be surprised if he did use the Dimension rack at some point, the above is just what I’ve seen him mention on forums.
I can’t help but think the TC 2290p should be part of this. Also, that there is a whole lot of cabinet simulation redundancy between the Opus and Cab Zeus. The scope and scale of the project however, is remarkable, and produced a magnificent result!
as someone who owned several of those original rack units back in the day, i really enjoyed this! i use an axe fx III now and it's almost trivially easy to get these kind of tones in the box, so it was really interesting to see it done with pedals. daisy chaining the different chorus pedals and the detune is a wonderful sound and the slight slapback delay in the trichorus is a big part of that 80's vibe, imo.
@@AKustik632 i mean, it's pretty trivial, tbh. all the effects are in there, the dimension, the tri chorus, the detune, vintage delays etc etc. and you can do the series/parallel routing as well. are you a fractal user?
@@Simeon_Harris Hello Simeon. Unfortunately I am a quad cortex user. I was just wondering how you did it in Axe, that maybe I can convert it to cortex. We don't have a tri chorus though in cortex so that must be really tough to replicate.
@@AKustik632 ah i see. there isn't any trick to it, i'm afraid. we have all these effects in the axe fx, so it's just a case of dropping them in to the grid in a series parallel layout.
Awesome RJ! I did really like the Adm setting on the delay unit--sounded really robust to my ears. You have inspired me to build a similar preset into my Neural Quad Cortex-thankfully it has the Boss Waza Dimension C in it!
Steve Lukather helped me realize I need to assign my pedal to the mid of the EQ to push the mid up durring solo parts. As far as DSP I just use a Digitech RP350 - I run that to a 12 channel mixer with DSP to control final gated delay. Most beginner guitarists don't even know that the old marshal amps had far more range than the green back speaker can produce. I'm completely ok with being a Tom Scholz clone in my mind. I don't DSP without Tom Scholz. RP350 as substitute for Rockman unit. etc
Awesome video, not sure why I'd avoided subscribing to your channel RJ but I'm here now and loving your content. A quick tip on compression, if you're in a recording situation and add a hard comp pre input to the DAW or mixer, any subsequent compression (which will always be added later across subsets or full mixes and in mastering) will multiply ratios and compress harder on earlier compression. This can cause headaches. Sweet sounds though!
Hay RJ!! Greetings from the big D!! This is great stuff!! The sound of our childhood!!!! I might add that the BBE Sonic Maximizer (rack version) was also a big deal back then (to add back the post compression lost frequencies). Best to you!
I use my Two Notes Torpedo Captor 8 to tap the preamp/power section of my amp to send to my stereo fx chain of my pedal board. My fx stereo out goes to stereo pair of Two Notes Torpedo Cab plus IR boxes. The outs of the Two Note Torpedo Cab Ms drive my MosValve power amp. The DI outs go to the mixer. I plan to get an Ampero II stomp to add routing (parallel/series) and other fx eventually. I pretty much cover alot of sonic stereo goodness.
Chorus has an extra voice (or voices) that moves continuously in pitch as governed by an LFO, whereas Micropitch gives you static pitches offset by set amounts (e.g. +/-10 cents) that do not move.
Pricing for this setup as of 4/28/24: Two Notes Opus Amp Sim: $299.95 Keely GC-2 Compressor: $199.99 Wampler EQuator EQ: $199.97 Black Mountain Volume Pedal: $189.00 (Sold Out) Boss Waza Craft DC-2W Tri-Chorus (Dimension-C): $219.00 Eventide TriceraChorus: $199.00 Wetter Box (Parallel Mixer): $279.00 Eventide PitchFactor Harmonizer: $349.00 Eventide MicroPitch Delay: $199.00 Source Audio Ventris Dual Reverb: $429.00 Strymon DIG Digital Delay: $379.00 GFI System Cabzeus Cab Sim: $319.00 Total Cost: $3,260.91 Current pricing for the authentic Dytronics Tri-Stereo Chorus CS-5 rack element with none of the other parts necessary... $4,499.99 on Reverb right now...
VCA stands for Voltage Controlled Amplifier, it is a unique breed of compression invented by dbx and heavily patented, integrated circuits, applications, everything. Believe it or not, this side of 300 bucks, the lowly Boss CS-3 is the only pedal that actually contains dbx/THAT chip and uses dbx topology - it is the only real ‘160A in a box’ out there. The attack knob is mislabeled, it is actually a release knob, with the fastest release fully clockwise. Also, sustain is obviously input treshold. Once you get around it, it works great for these sounds and it has been on my board forever for that reason alone.
RJ, I’m not totally certain, maybe it’s the way it’s EQ’d (or RUclips) but it sounds out of phase to me. I dig the effort that went into all this though. As someone who grew up in the ‘80s, this is great!
I listened to this on Ipad speakers and it sounded like everything below 1khz was eqed out - i.e. really really thin sounding. Haven’t checked with headphones yet but if this stereo signal was sent to a FOH mixer they probably wouldn’t like the sound of it. Something is definitely wrong though.
@@slovokia Maybe it was jus so much high end that it sounded out of phase. With not a lot of meat in the middle could be fooling my ears that there’s a phase issue.
Well I Iistened on headphones. There is a fair amount of low frequency content (below 200hz). It doesn’t sound out of phase. I think the issue is either that a lot of the lower midrange has been sucked out or the upper mids have been boosted a lot. So when you listen on a device that doesn’t reproduce the content below 200hz very well, the guitar tone sounds unpleasantly thin. It needs more energy from 200hz to 1 khz to sound normal.
Another factor might be that on the newer IPads the upper midrange is very prominent as well so with this upper mid boost you get an even thinner sounding tone. Something that mastering engineers and mixing engineers must take into account.
Love the idea and thank you for nailing it. I would have used either Line 6 DL8 for delays (they use Lexicon algorithms) or the TC Electronic 2290 delay pedal. But despite the parallel mixing I still found the sound lacking in definition at the end of it all. Maybe I would have gone for an Empress Para Eq for the eq pedal for versatility.
I really love the video and the pedalboard 80s sound because pedals are so cool but i think you should use your PT 100 amp just to make it more real. Playin is awesome as allways!
Regarding the Dimension C, one of the frequent uses of the old rack version was combining multiple buttons. The Waza version allows that in the SDD mode. Steve Stevens popularized that one. I think he ran buttons 2&4 or 3&4, if I recall. So multiple dimensions. 😎🎶 Great video man!
I loved the 80s clean chorused sound, but when they added it to distorted tones it was too washed out. Every now and then I forget to turn my chorus off when I switch to overdrive and wonder why I hate it. One pedal that sounds great for something like this is the Boss CP-1X compressor. The high frequencies are preserved wherever the compression is set. Really great sound.
The Tristereo and Dimension D together, starts sounding like a Mutron BiPhase moving to underwater sounds. One of your settings sounds like WangChung - Dance Hall Days sound. The sound at 26:22 is definitely in Steve Hillage 'Electrick Gypsies' territory.
Not certain how the Dimension pedal works, but on the original, Mode 4 wasn’t a standalone mode, but rather a modification to 1-3, which increased the wet level of the effect. In this, it didn’t sound to me like the Dimension was doing what I would expect and that could be why. You should try experimenting with one of the other modes and then trying to engage 4 simultaneously, which is how the original worked.
Sounds awesome. One thing comes to mind, though. I think they may have used the initial amp as a dry amp, as well, using the loadbox to tap the signal, of the speaker out, and then sending the speaker level signal back to the initial cab. Then everything else would be as described. You could do the same thing by just utilizing the XLR out on the opus as your dry signal. That way they could blend the effects back as needed.
Thanks for the video, a really informative breakdown. Although, I have to admit, I believe that the two choruses should be routed in parallel and not serially (one into another) if you really want the both of them on. LOL talking about THE lushhhhhh 🙂
This is absolutely GLORIOUS. Solid choices as well.
Tricerachorus has dedicated detune section that can do the +/- stereo microshift thing on top of tri-chorus so it's a great "instant 80's" box.
Thanks Leon! Yeah that Tricerachorus is a solid box.
Too bad he didn't want to buy those rack units 😂. I saw a YT video by a guy from down under who did the same thing with rack gear. That was GLORIOUS. But I can't quite remember if he already has the Eventide.
Recently I was looking for the Eclipse, but even those are pretty expensive. But I found a GSP2101 with the expansion board for a low price. Should arrive on monday. In contrast to the “purple monster”, you have the ability to route everything manually, so you can do parallel inside of the unit. Have to see if it's good enough for an authentic 80's tone. Tried it on the GSP1101, but although you can do parallel, you don't have enough options to shape the sounds of the reverb and delay 😢.
I believe Preset number 1 on the Tricerachorus is Leon's fabulous work?
Dan and Mick would be in ecstasy over this board!
This may be the greatest, most informative guitar pedal video I've ever watched. I LOVE this tone, and you nailed replicating it, RJ. Many thanks!
If you liked this one, you should definitely watch the one by Vertex Effects on this subject.
@@johanneschristopherstahle3395 Thanks. I'll check it out.
RJ: This is an amazingly informative video that doesn’t feel like I’m being sold something. RUclips needs more of this and not a straight up product ad. Thank you.
I'm supposed to be working on my home gym setup but I find this fascinating and now all my productivity has ground to a halt. I love this guitar sound.
Completely nails that 80s tone and aesthetic. Very nice job!
This may be one of my favorite episodes of any show ever. 80’s rack tones, RJs sweet playing, and the mentioning of my favorite guitarist, Dann Huff (such a legendary player). Will be watching this often and working on my own 80’s pedalboard now. Sorry babe !😅
Dann Huff and Steve Stevens are my favorite git players
on
earth... ❤
The DIG is my favorite delay pedal.
These are my favorite tones. I actually have a huge Bradshaw rack unit with a 2290 and Lexicon racks and all that for my Floyd act - but it’s so big that it mostly stays in storage when I’m not on tour. This pedalboard solution seems much more useable!
maaaaan, by the end and you flipped on the Distortion with Tricerachorus, that was the extravaganza , the cherry on the cake as we say ! so lush
Thanks for the shout out RJ! Sounds great! The MVP here on those diagrams is Kjetil Nesheim (Kan Lyd) in Norway. He provided those to me, but I’m sure he’d love the idea of more folks understanding this signal path by way of your rig build and breakdown! Well done!
Thanks buddy and thanks to Kjetil! Which rig shall we mirror next?! lol
@@RJRonquillo The Edge.
Boss PS-6 Harmonist pedal does stereo detune. You can even (split the signal before and) turn balance knob 100% wet to create wet/dry/wet!
Love to har how to do this in detail .I have the ps6
I never get tired of that 80's Tri-Chorus/rack tone. It's as pleasing to me as a Fender Rhodes . . . great job with this. Check out the Red Seven Lil Wave Tri Chorus or the Free the Tone Tri Avatar = both incredible for this. oNe LovE from NYC
Brilliant demo, your translation of the BB rigs and diagrams into an actual pedalboard that is accessible to working guitarists is a stroke of genius. And the real revelation for me was using the EQ pedal 'trick' after the compressor to put frequencies back that can get hollowed out. Will be getting an Equator to fix this potential issue.
This was absolutely awesome. I just re-lived the 80's
This is the most descriptive and informative video on the classic rack setups I’ve seen.
I enjoyed this. The tones here are where my ears set. I love it. I heard so so many songs in you just going through the pedals and demoing them. Blessings to you.
Great video. Keep the 80’s session stuff coming!
Dude, Keeley's Dyno My Roto is the ultimate 3D mono chorus and it's perfect for the dyno Rhodes sound, as well as Cyndi Lauper, Crowded House, etc. (it also does a very nice Leslie and something called Rotoflange) Betwixt that and the TC SCF Gold+ I have mono and stereo '80s chorus and flange sounds covered. (the analog TC Gold also does pitch modulation) My '80s compressor is a vintage TC Sustain+Para EQ. The EQ is one band, but it's the right one. I generally run the pitch, chorus and delay FX after the cabsim, as though I were miking the amp in a studio and using rack effects on a line level signal. Speaking of delays, my TC Nova Repeater does the stuff you'd get from a TC 2290; the hi and lo inputs mean it can handle instrument or line level signals. A Flamma cab offers stereo cab sim and a Korg SDD 3000 delay does the U2-type stereo stuff that requires stereo/dual mono I/O, or if I'm going for a more rhythmic delay thing, more Gilmour than the Edge, a Vox Delaylab.
Having grown up as a musician in the 80's, it's fun to see people now strive for tones that were pretty standard back then (standard AWESOMENESS, mind you, but that sound was everywhere). I still have my "refrigerator" rack, but now it holds outboard gear in my studio. Players today can get these tones with far less back injuries than we sustained, luckily for them!
I can literally feel the 80s
This is a great board build. One of the more interesting I've ever seen! Thanks for showcasing and sharing. The pitch detune in tandem with the tri-chorus makes for THE sound. Great video!
Great video RJ-you have unlocked the 80's studio-sound mystery. I could have used it 40 years ago, but I guess now will have to do. Thx.
@rjronquillo full disclosure I'm a 63 yr old punk blues guy that back in that area I hated the chorus rack sound. As I have aged and dived back into songs that were not in my wheelhouse I have become a fan of your explorations into those 80's hits sounds. Damn it man!!!! Now I'm a 80's chorus fan and it is amazing. Thanks for being a true historian and opening up my ears.
Great video and go Dan at Gig Rig for the Wetter box. He's a great tech and a great guitarist.
I am here because of the fender ad on TikTok. Glad I found you RJ.
In the 80s I used to have alot of pedals. I still do, but I used to too.
Lol
Okay, Mitch.
Best clean tone ever cuts so well thru a mix 🙌🏽
Ever since you posted your original video using the UAD virtual effects rig, I have gone all-in building the real deal. Almost $10k in retrospect, this pedal based solution is probably the way to go. Awesome knowledge, thanks for sharing.
Bringing back the 80’s! 💪 Nice job RJ!
This is AWESOME!!! I've been building my own Bradshaw "pedalboard rig" for a year now so this is epic to see!!!
Nice. That was a lot to replicate 80's tone. I was wondering why I couldn't replicate it with a single chorus pedal.
This board is insane. I still have a Digitech multi effects rack I inherited from a friend who stopped playing in the 90s. I'll have to try it out again.
Wow this was incredible RJ thank you
Decades ago, when I was a really ignorant young lad, I just loved these sounds. Ironically, and accurately, though I knew absolutely nothing about gear back then, I somehow knew instinctively that these sounds could only be possible with a ton of quality gear. So I came to call these kinds of tones the "really expensive" sounds. XD Guess I was right after all. Nice part is that, decades later, yes, you can mimic these sounds like RJ has, but you can also come reasonably close with some patient tweaking in many modern mfx units like Helix, GT1000, etc, etc, etc...
GREAT VID RJ! Happy 2024 to you and yours....
Crazy good. Love the Two Notes Opus in the chain.. I can't get enough of it.
Very nice RJ !! The 80's tone is so lush and tasty. I've set up a few different 80's sounds on my rig and love them. It's a must to have it stereo too !! Cheers bro.
For getting closer to the Tri stereo chorus sound with a pedal, i personally would recommend either the red seven The lil'wave (i have one i lent to a friend) but it's not truly stereo, its a mono chorus, so when i compare to my TSC in rack, its nice but the stereo image isnt as intense. The next thing i consider EXTREMELY close to my TSC, is Free the Tone's Tri Avatar chorus, a friend bought one after turning crazy playing on my rack and seeing prices of songbird and other TSCs going nuts and playing them side by side, it was creally a close one, it have truly 3 chorus in it (L, L+R and R) AND a 4th dry signal.
Maybe a tad more depth on my TSC but it could also be because of the age of the unit and it's components, the quality of my rack's signal path (i made all the cable by myself with a huge bobin of Klotz and hi-gon/neutrik jacks), no idea. But definitely my N⁰1 recommend to get that TSC sound in a pedal, in stereo, would be the tri avatar. The rest is pale imho.
I think you have not tried the Tricerachorus
That's super close to the real thing! Unfortunately the audio is clipping at the end on the lead part...but the tone is right there!
@ WETTERBOX: really good sounds and ideas in this video! I also own a Wetterbox and found the happy accident that two 100% wet signals sound so good mixed togehter interesting.
The Wetterbox does not transmit a dry signal to the outputs if both send/returns are connected.
Only a "Electro Harmonix Switchblade Pro", or the "GFI System Duophony Parallel Blender", for example, offers that.
Cool.
Very cool! Nice work! Great to see you actually having a clean tone vs the light crunch you normally call “clean’! Next thing I think would be cool would be doing the classic 80s and 90s Nashville sound in a board!
Thanks for this, R.J.! I've been waiting for this ever since you did the plugin version. Despite seeing that diagram before, putting the delay(s) after the reverb/wetter box never occurred to me. Very cool! Also, as you said, the great thing about the Tricerachorus is that it does the Tri-Chorus thing AND the detune thing, and you can dial in amounts for both. Saved me some real estate on my 80's-inspired board.
Good job. This is a good template for my ears. It’s the sounds l do love.
Brilliant, thank you for sharing this and for unlocking the sounds I've spent too many years looking for.
I love this so much. So when are you releasing an 80's tone driven album that I can listen to on repeat to make my wife question my sanity?
The best sounds the best Music is from the 70's and 80's NO DOUBT about it. It's time to return to these IMMORTAL TIMELESS sounds.
It's not lost on me that even your guitar strap is from back in the day. I bought these for all my guitars after our drummer dropped my guitar player's strat on the parking lot while taking a break from band practice.
That chorus sounds amazing.
Boss is good I like Boss electronics, but damn Eventide makes some kickass effects, that chorus is over the top. If I recall Vai's Passion and Warfare album was done with Eventide Processors.
After seeing you mention the Dimension C/SDD-320, I went down a rabbit hole to see what songs used it, and saw that someone posted Cocteau Twin's Cherry Coloured Funk. After thinking about it, the Dimension C with some lush, ambient reverb is basically the entire sound of the Cocteau Twins. I think that's a good reference for the sound.
Robin Guthrie at some point came to prefer Lexicon racks for Micropitch (at +/-10 cents). He also preferred stacked delays to reverbs, although he may have made exceptions for 2000s collabs with Harold Budd.
I would not be surprised if he did use the Dimension rack at some point, the above is just what I’ve seen him mention on forums.
you are the man!🙏🙏
I can’t help but think the TC 2290p should be part of this.
Also, that there is a whole lot of cabinet simulation redundancy between the Opus and Cab Zeus.
The scope and scale of the project however, is remarkable, and produced a magnificent result!
That was awesome!! Thank you R.J.!!
as someone who owned several of those original rack units back in the day, i really enjoyed this! i use an axe fx III now and it's almost trivially easy to get these kind of tones in the box, so it was really interesting to see it done with pedals. daisy chaining the different chorus pedals and the detune is a wonderful sound and the slight slapback delay in the trichorus is a big part of that 80's vibe, imo.
oh and thanks for turning me on to using the dbx. i've always used it on bass and drums in the past, but never tried it on guitar. wow, it slams!
Hey Simeon! How did you set this up in Axe? Thanks!!!
@@AKustik632 i mean, it's pretty trivial, tbh. all the effects are in there, the dimension, the tri chorus, the detune, vintage delays etc etc. and you can do the series/parallel routing as well. are you a fractal user?
@@Simeon_Harris Hello Simeon. Unfortunately I am a quad cortex user. I was just wondering how you did it in Axe, that maybe I can convert it to cortex. We don't have a tri chorus though in cortex so that must be really tough to replicate.
@@AKustik632 ah i see. there isn't any trick to it, i'm afraid. we have all these effects in the axe fx, so it's just a case of dropping them in to the grid in a series parallel layout.
Awesome RJ! I did really like the Adm setting on the delay unit--sounded really robust to my ears. You have inspired me to build a similar preset into my Neural Quad Cortex-thankfully it has the Boss Waza Dimension C in it!
the Tri softens the attack to my ears
Steve Lukather helped me realize I need to assign my pedal to the mid of the EQ to push the mid up durring solo parts.
As far as DSP I just use a Digitech RP350 - I run that to a 12 channel mixer with DSP to control final gated delay.
Most beginner guitarists don't even know that the old marshal amps had far more range than the green back speaker can produce.
I'm completely ok with being a Tom Scholz clone in my mind. I don't DSP without Tom Scholz. RP350 as substitute for Rockman unit. etc
Rack systems are always so rad
I have the Ventris pedal....love that thing
I had mates with a fridge worth of rack gear...
And wondered why they're tone sounded like a fridge!!
Great video btw mate.
Sounds petfect for songs like Purple Rain and You can't kill rock and roll
The sound of my teenage years 😍 Thank you!
Eventide with wetter is so Purple Rain, love it.
Love the GC-2 ❤ between drive and delay effects
And the EQuator is a nice redux of the Boss PQ-4 Bass Para Eq
Awesome video, not sure why I'd avoided subscribing to your channel RJ but I'm here now and loving your content. A quick tip on compression, if you're in a recording situation and add a hard comp pre input to the DAW or mixer, any subsequent compression (which will always be added later across subsets or full mixes and in mastering) will multiply ratios and compress harder on earlier compression. This can cause headaches. Sweet sounds though!
Hay RJ!! Greetings from the big D!! This is great stuff!! The sound of our childhood!!!! I might add that the BBE Sonic Maximizer (rack version) was also a big deal back then (to add back the post compression lost frequencies). Best to you!
Awesome video. These tones are amazing. I’ve always been obsessed with them.
What a glorious tone!!
I use my Two Notes Torpedo Captor 8 to tap the preamp/power section of my amp to send to my stereo fx chain of my pedal board. My fx stereo out goes to stereo pair of Two Notes Torpedo Cab plus IR boxes. The outs of the Two Note Torpedo Cab Ms drive my MosValve power amp. The DI outs go to the mixer. I plan to get an Ampero II stomp to add routing (parallel/series) and other fx eventually. I pretty much cover alot of sonic stereo goodness.
Chorus has an extra voice (or voices) that moves continuously in pitch as governed by an LFO, whereas Micropitch gives you static pitches offset by set amounts (e.g. +/-10 cents) that do not move.
Great stuff, RJ. Fun project. 80's. racks were so cool.
Pricing for this setup as of 4/28/24:
Two Notes Opus Amp Sim: $299.95
Keely GC-2 Compressor: $199.99
Wampler EQuator EQ: $199.97
Black Mountain Volume Pedal: $189.00 (Sold Out)
Boss Waza Craft DC-2W Tri-Chorus (Dimension-C): $219.00
Eventide TriceraChorus: $199.00
Wetter Box (Parallel Mixer): $279.00
Eventide PitchFactor Harmonizer: $349.00
Eventide MicroPitch Delay: $199.00
Source Audio Ventris Dual Reverb: $429.00
Strymon DIG Digital Delay: $379.00
GFI System Cabzeus Cab Sim: $319.00
Total Cost: $3,260.91
Current pricing for the authentic Dytronics Tri-Stereo Chorus CS-5 rack element with none of the other parts necessary... $4,499.99 on Reverb right now...
VCA stands for Voltage Controlled Amplifier, it is a unique breed of compression invented by dbx and heavily patented, integrated circuits, applications, everything. Believe it or not, this side of 300 bucks, the lowly Boss CS-3 is the only pedal that actually contains dbx/THAT chip and uses dbx topology - it is the only real ‘160A in a box’ out there. The attack knob is mislabeled, it is actually a release knob, with the fastest release fully clockwise. Also, sustain is obviously input treshold. Once you get around it, it works great for these sounds and it has been on my board forever for that reason alone.
Cool.
Very cool board my friend!! I've been debating building a board just like this!! Cheers RJ!!
RJ, I’m not totally certain, maybe it’s the way it’s EQ’d (or RUclips) but it sounds out of phase to me. I dig the effort that went into all this though. As someone who grew up in the ‘80s, this is great!
I listened to this on Ipad speakers and it sounded like everything below 1khz was eqed out - i.e. really really thin sounding. Haven’t checked with headphones yet but if this stereo signal was sent to a FOH mixer they probably wouldn’t like the sound of it. Something is definitely wrong though.
@@slovokia Maybe it was jus so much high end that it sounded out of phase. With not a lot of meat in the middle could be fooling my ears that there’s a phase issue.
Well I Iistened on headphones. There is a fair amount of low frequency content (below 200hz). It doesn’t sound out of phase. I think the issue is either that a lot of the lower midrange has been sucked out or the upper mids have been boosted a lot. So when you listen on a device that doesn’t reproduce the content below 200hz very well, the guitar tone sounds unpleasantly thin. It needs more energy from 200hz to 1 khz to sound normal.
Another factor might be that on the newer IPads the upper midrange is very prominent as well so with this upper mid boost you get an even thinner sounding tone. Something that mastering engineers and mixing engineers must take into account.
Maaan... KILLER TONE.
As you said …”nice!” 😀👍
This is one of the best gear videos I’ve seen in a few years!!! All these great sounds from pedals!!!! Awesome job!!!
This is great!
Love the idea and thank you for nailing it. I would have used either Line 6 DL8 for delays (they use Lexicon algorithms) or the TC Electronic 2290 delay pedal. But despite the parallel mixing I still found the sound lacking in definition at the end of it all. Maybe I would have gone for an Empress Para Eq for the eq pedal for versatility.
I really love the video and the pedalboard 80s sound because pedals are so cool but i think you should use your PT 100 amp just to make it more real. Playin is awesome as allways!
I am now a chorus enjoyer thanks kuya RJ!
Much Needed!!! Amazing Job Mr. Ronquillo 😮💨
Regarding the Dimension C, one of the frequent uses of the old rack version was combining multiple buttons. The Waza version allows that in the SDD mode. Steve Stevens popularized that one. I think he ran buttons 2&4 or 3&4, if I recall. So multiple dimensions. 😎🎶 Great video man!
Great tones! RJ I would love to see you build this with the new TC 2290 pedal or Boss SDE 3000 pedal.
Awesome as Always!
here for the guitar content but nice choice with the Orient diver watch!
I loved the 80s clean chorused sound, but when they added it to distorted tones it was too washed out. Every now and then I forget to turn my chorus off when I switch to overdrive and wonder why I hate it. One pedal that sounds great for something like this is the Boss CP-1X compressor. The high frequencies are preserved wherever the compression is set. Really great sound.
The Tristereo and Dimension D together, starts sounding like a Mutron BiPhase moving to underwater sounds. One of your settings sounds like WangChung - Dance Hall Days sound. The sound at 26:22 is definitely in Steve Hillage 'Electrick Gypsies' territory.
Love this. I’ve been trying to get something similar to this myself. Thanks for all the ideas.
sounds fanstastic. Well done.
Wow your video is amazing and I am so glad that I found your channel so much information and inspiration
Not certain how the Dimension pedal works, but on the original, Mode 4 wasn’t a standalone mode, but rather a modification to 1-3, which increased the wet level of the effect. In this, it didn’t sound to me like the Dimension was doing what I would expect and that could be why. You should try experimenting with one of the other modes and then trying to engage 4 simultaneously, which is how the original worked.
Sounds awesome. One thing comes to mind, though. I think they may have used the initial amp as a dry amp, as well, using the loadbox to tap the signal, of the speaker out, and then sending the speaker level signal back to the initial cab. Then everything else would be as described. You could do the same thing by just utilizing the XLR out on the opus as your dry signal. That way they could blend the effects back as needed.
Thanks for the video, a really informative breakdown. Although, I have to admit, I believe that the two choruses should be routed in parallel and not serially (one into another) if you really want the both of them on. LOL talking about THE lushhhhhh 🙂
Boys and Girls, let's this be a hard lesson. Great tone requires lots of money, period, full stop.
Wonderful, Kingsley jester instead of the opus for that dumble overdrive and I’m there.
Outrageous. Outstanding Off the chart. Thank you RJ. Love this. J
Perfect!! Love to watch these kinds of videos
Nice Tyler 👍👍 Hands down the best guitar I've ever played. I do have one of their basses and it's just as fabulous.