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Today we're going to talk about our Flint Tremolo & Reverb pedal.
We wanted to bring it back to the days of classic guitar amps where the only effect that
guitar players had to choose from really was what was on their amps, which was Reverb and Tremolo.
We wanted to explore this era a little bit, it was a classic time in guitar sounds,
and show some classic Tremolo sounds.
With the Reverb we wanted to also bring it a little bit forward into the '70s and '80s when Reverb advanced a little bit more.
Flint gives you three different types of Tremolos.
The sonically complex '61 Harmonic Tremolo.
The swampy and sultry '63 Power Tube Tremolo and the sharp and balanced '65 Photocell Tremolo.
You also get three completely unique Reverbs.
The classic '60s Spring Tank Reverb.
The solid state '70s Electronic Plate Reverb and a nostalgic '80s Hall Rack Reverb.
The Harmonic Tremolo is the rarest of the three Tremolos we have and it had a fairly short period of availability in the early '60s.
It gets its signature sound by using a dual band filtering effect
that alternately emphasizes the low and high frequencies.
Bringing the intensity up brings the Tremolo in a smooth manner.
Here we hear the more exaggerated alternating frequency bands of the Harmonic Tremolo.
At full Intensity a nice deep Tremolo is achieved.
Speed Control is adjusted to have a range that goes lower than was found in vintage amp circuits.
Nice mellow sound there.
Again the Speed Control will very smoothly change the LFO speed.
Fast flutter there.
The Power Tube Tremolo utilizes a LFO to directly change the power amp tube bias.
Some of the signature effects of this Tremolo type are crossover distortion at low
volumes, power tube distortion at maximum volumes, and also power supply sag.
Again with zero Intensity no Tremolo to be heard, but smoothly brought in by increasing the Intensity.
Very smooth pleasing characteristic of the tube circuit Tremolos.
Biasing the Tube Tremolo was always a bit of a trick, so many of examples of vintage amps
don't have a very deep Tremolo, but we wanted to make sure with full Intensity that you
can get a nice deep Tremolo that actually goes to zero volume when its at low point.
Our Photocell Tremolo is a faithful recreation of the classic Phototrem circuits from mid-'60s American amps.
Those circuits are actually the most common type of vintage Tremolo you'll find out there.
They used light dependent resistors with neon bulbs to vary the resistance of
the resistor that changed the amplitude of your guitar signal.
You can hear the nature of that circuit which is a little more of harder edge compared to the Tube type or the Harmonic type.
And again somewhere around here is where most of the vintage amps will max out their intensity.
There's a full "off" part of the waveform there, but it is very short.
And we've given you a little extra range.
Again the speed goes lower than what was available in vintage amp circuits.
The '60s Spring Tank Reverb is our very faithful recreation of a full size two spring tank.
This type of Reverb was commonly used in vintage amps of the era.
In two spring tank, each spring has a slightly different delay time.
This adds to the complexity of the reverb sound.
With the decay at minimum we're going to get a very short damped sound.
Maybe that allows for a little higher mix to be used.
Bring that up some more.
Somewhere around here is where most of the longer springs sounds are produced.
What's nice is you can get a long spring tank and darken it up a bit, and bring the Mix back a little bit.
Get a nice kind of mellow classic sound there.
At maximum we get a long ringing spring sound.
We can make that really bright.
Increase the Mix here some.
Our '70s Electronic Plate Reverb is a tribute to one of the earliest digital reverbs.
It's a reverb algorithm that was actually all hardware based and used multiple delay lines and parallel.
Each delay line had multiple taps and filtered feedback.
This reverb is smooth and rich with a quick build up in density.
We'll bring the Decay to minimum.
Get a very short plate there.
At maximum a near infinite plate will occur.
With the impact of the Color we can get a bright plate here.
The '80s Hall is our rendition of '80s rack reverbs.
These are microprocessor based but had extremely limited processing power.
Because of the limited power processing power that they had back then, the designers were forced to get pretty creative.
They used efficient regenerative series loops of all pass filters, delays and low pass filters.
The delay lines were also modulated to increase density and add warmth.
These '80s Halls had distinctive early reflections followed by slowly building late reverberation.
At the shortest setting you get a very close space.
Nearly infinite decay on the '80s Reverb as well.
Now we'll hear the impact of Color ***.
Very nice warm reverb there.
Flint has four secondary functions which are available by holding down both footswitches and turning a desired ***.
The four functions are Tremolo Boost & Cut, Reverb Boost & Cut, Tap Subdivision and
Effect Order, which swaps out the order Tremolo into Reverb or Reverb into Tremolo.
We're going to start with the Reverb feeding the Tremolo, which is the configuration of the vintage combo amps.
So there you hear the reverberated sound is being effected by the envelope of the Tremolo.
So the Tremolo is very dominate in the sound there.
But if we change the order and have the Tremolo first into the Reverb, that gives us the sense of a
Tremolo Amplifier that's being recorded in a large space or had some post production reverb added to it.
So there the reverb is not effected by the Tremolo Envelope.
First we've got our input jack which by default is Mono Input.
But with a little jumper inside you can use this as a TRS stereo input.
No problem, all you need is a little TRS stereo adapter cable.
Then we've got our regular Left and Right Stereo Output jacks
and a standard 9 volt DC center negative plug for your power.
Lastly we've got our EXP multi-function input jack which is handy because you can set it up in three ways.
You can use either an Expression Pedal, an external Tap switch, or our Favorite Switch.
With the Expression Pedal you get control over any *** on the front panel.
With the Favorite Switch you can save your favorite preset and with the Tap Tempo footswitch
connected you can easily set the tempo of your Tremolo by tapping the Tap Tempo switch.
Please be sure to check out our other Flint videos for more audio examples and *** settings.