Dreaming of Envelope Filters

[darthbatman]

Who' got what? I'm thinking about getting one and trying to narrow it down. I play bass

[Chankgeez]

XEROGRAPH DELUXE?

[retinal orbita]

I have this giant monstrosity - it's awesome. I bought it for $65 for a guy on craigslist, had the switch replaced, the grounding wire re-soldered, and it's ultra funky and hands down awesome.

YET - It's extremely temperamental, and hard to master - even when you find a setting you love you will move to a different part of the bass you'll find it doesn't do what you want exactly the same way. You'll be perpetually fiddling with it, forever and ever. I still love it. It's so fucking funky. Listen to the first track of Belive It by the New Tony Williams Lifetime and that's what I want from a fucking envelope filter. Don't even use the boost, thaty's a big

I am debating on buying a used MXR Envelope Filter to A/B the two - I love diversity in funky funky sounds!! I don't know if it's the Bartolini active pickups, the six strings on my awesome Ibanez natural wood bass, but it's a fickle and harsh mistress. And believe me, you'll be like "oh fuck yeah NAILED IT MOTHER FUCKER" and the guys in your band will have taken it outside and thrown it at a homeless person when you were in the bathroom because they hate envelope filters. Whatever. Fuck those guys....

I have learned it's all about your attack, and the gain knob. I've also learned that when I'm making harsh noise the peak/gain knobs are fucking brewtal for the overall sound.

[coldbrightsunlight]

Xerograph is frickin sick. I had one in a trade, gave it back, massive regret. It rules!

[rfurtkamp]

It's limited and bulky, but if I want a non-synth envelope filter (have my guitar synth for that), I reach for the venerable Bassballs.

It's simple and relatively repeatable on what it does, and I get all the wanky envelope bass stuff I really want out of it.

But I am not The Modulation King these days.

[adapt]

had one of these, hands down best ever:

[coldbrightsunlight]

Forgot about this earlier, the 3 Leaf Audio stuff is very good.

[univalve]

Forgot about this earlier, the 3 Leaf Audio stuff is very good.

Do you have first hand expierence with them? I'm also curious about them.

[one bad monkey]

Forgot about this earlier, the 3 Leaf Audio stuff is very good.

Do you have first hand expierence with them? I'm also curious about them.

I was one of the five guys that got to prototype the Proton when it was initially released a couple of years back. Great pedal that responded well, and had a lot of syrupy character to it. Haven't had a chance to try anything else of Spencer's, but from dealing with him on that as well as just chatting with him, I have no doubt that all of his stuff is top notch.

To the OP, I demo'd the Envelope Phaser from Pigtronix earlier this year (when they were just released), and right now that is the one on my board. It's got the same inherent character of a filter, but because it's with a phaser, there is a cleanness to it that really lets the sound cut through without getting swallowed up in the mix. Every time I've used this pedal on a gig, people have complimented me on the tone I get with it (and we're talking musicians on the stand, not just audience members).

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UD8ehWEQCCo[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vgaHErflcs[/youtube]

[coldbrightsunlight]

Forgot about this earlier, the 3 Leaf Audio stuff is very good.

Do you have first hand expierence with them? I'm also curious about them.

Yeah I've tried the Proton and the (discontinued) Groove Regulator. They both sounded fantastic, had that classic envelope filter sound and a nice set of controls. The Proton was cooler (probably why it's still around), and I see that the new ones have a Decay knob which sounds super fun.

[goroth]

Subdecay proteus

[Deltaphoenix]

Subdecay proteus

I found Subdecay filters to sound weird on Bass.

I use an Iron Ether Xerograph DLX, it is pretty cool, It can shake the house if the frequency and resonance is set right.

Source Audio BEF Pro is awesome, it can do a lot of neat stuff, it has a back page that you can set up an LFO to open and close the filter.

[univalve]

Thanks for The Info guys!

[coldbrightsunlight]

A bit of extra opinion, I did a Proton/Xero DLX shootout once which was pretty cool, they're both very different.

Proton: really funky and quacky, sounds very "organic", a bit less tweakable than the Xero, much more restrained

Xero: very synthy sounding, gets ridiculously loud and resonant (crank it and it self oscillates), more tweakable but can't quite replicate the funky quack of the Proton

Basically, if you only want the classic envelope filter sound, I haven't tried a better one than the Proton (though I can't claim to have tried them all!), but if you want something versatile and crazy the Xero seems like the king.

[scabiosa]

I have a subdecay prometheus that I really like.

I can get the funky stuff out of it but also spacy, dubby, crazy shit is possible.

I love it.
+ the step filter for some more crazyness!