Decay Cascade
Blend reverb and cascading analog amplification stages to create complex and abrasive textures. Expanding on the idea of running reverb into distortion, the Decay Cascade can produce lo-fi subtlety or slabs of disintegrated noise. Or both.
Dial in reverb ranging from a light bounce to saturated drones, with a maximum decay time of about 20 seconds. The reverb mix is sent to a versatile drive circuit with a voltage sag gate for extra deterioration. Combine dry, reverb, and distorted reverb layers into your desired textural mix. This then passes through a preamp stage inspired by 1960s test amplifiers that can add another boost of raw gain and crackling gated tails, with an optional low pass filter. Add a little dust and murk, or create the sound of amp death. Thankfully, there is a volume control.
Make sounds like:
- Tastefully gritty lo-fi echo
- Spitty, dying battery overdrive or fuzz
- Layers of distorted and clean reverb
- A 78 record found buried in the woods
- "Something’s not right"
- Harsh-ambient signal obliteration
Especially suited for broken sounds with gated and dusty reverb artifacts. The drive, preamp and sag settings are quite interactive, with plenty of options for fine-tuning.
Audio Samples
Guitar - Crunchy layers from one signal
Guitar - Lofi DI (no amp)
Guitar - Textural/ambient
Guitar - Loud
Synth - mono
Synth - poly
Bass
Drum Machine
Theremin
Lamp
Controls
- MODE Reverb models:
- Hall with slow pitch drift. Dark and woozy.
- Spring with very long decay. Bright, full, and textural.
- Lofi bucket brigade echo. Primitive and bouncy.
- LEVEL Set a reverb balance between 100% wet and dry signal.
- DECAY Set the reverb time from a short reflection to long drones.
- DRIVE A distortion channel that the reverb mix goes through in series before being mixed in parallel. Ranges from light overdrive to high gain.
- SAG Voltage starve the distortion circuit to produce a gated fuzz effect.
- MIX Create a layered mix of the original clean/reverb mix and the drive channel.
- AMP Preamp setting (top to bottom)
- Neutral amplification stage.
- High gain boost with a low pass filter. Very loud and murky with gated “dust” trails.
- High gain boost with no filter. Extremely loud and harsh with gated “dust” trails.
- Volume. Output. Loudness. Unquiet.
Specifications
- 145mm x 120mm x 56mm
- 1/4" TS mono audio input and output
- Requires 9V power from a centre-negative 2.1mm jack
- 60mA current draw
- No battery compartment.