Cupwise Frequency Tweakers B Philco Tube Amp For Nebula-MAGNETRiXX

An old Philco 6-tube amplifier has been extensively sampled to use as a unique tone-shaping tool in Nebula. Much time and effort went into making sure that the end results were faithful to the hardware, which sounds great, and was sold with several phonograph consoles (model G1708, for example) back in the 50′s. It was sampled in 3 different hardware setups (using Lynx Aurora), for 3 different flavors. For all 3, the unit’s bass and treble knobs were sampled so that Nebula could recreate the behavior of the unit across all possible combinations of the two. The ‘bass’ knob mostly acts as an adjustable high pass, and ‘treble’ as a shelf. Together they can also be used to create ’tilt-like’ eq setups (check the freq response graphs in manual to see what’s possible).

This is a vintage unit, not without it’s imperfections! We want those imperfections and unique tones though, so to fully capture them all 3 ‘flavors’ were sampled with dynamic behavior. Dynamics are at the very least rare (if it has even been done outside of this series) in Nebula EQ programs. This way, though, with every possible position/combination of the bass/treble controls, you are getting a complete representation of the amp for that setup- including it’s non-linear dynamic behavior. This requires more time to sample, but also results in much bigger and more complex programs. There are 5k and 10k versions for all 3 flavors. The 10k go up to 3000 samples, and will take a while to load on slower machines! These also tax CPU a little heavier than the other Nebula programs that you’re used to. That’s the price for a dynamic recreation of even a simple EQ such as this, but it’s worth it!

Also included in the set is an effect that’s a bit more experimental: an auto-wah. It reacts to input level. The Philco amp was also used in this effect’s creation, among other trickery. A peak filter moves in response to input audio, along with the treble knob from the amp (amount of treble knob action can be mixed in to user’s taste). 2 different versions are available which have the filter(s) moving in opposite directions when triggered by input. Every control on the main Nebula page is in use here, to give the user total tweakability. A high-pass filter can be adjusted for the internal side-chain used for the control signal, allowing you to prevent low bass from triggering the filter, but there are also external side-chain versions which would allow you to use more custom filters, or even an entirely different source. Besides that you have attack and release controls, and a sensitivity control which directly effects the filter action.

Here are some demo clips showing what this stuff can do:

Here’s a mix with drums and bass. Only the drums (not including the hats) ever go through the wah. The first one uses wah type A, the second uses type B. Both start with dry drums first, then processed. Static bursts separate program changes.


Also for the wah. It’s a funky guitar. First you hear it dry, then it repeats, using different control setups each time, and both wah types A and B are used.

These show off some of the different tones you can get with the Philco tube amp/EQ programs. Both clips use the same full mix. First clip uses amp/EQ #1 (only the amp was sampled). It starts with the dry mix, then the whole mix goes through the effect, and switches between different setting positions of the bass/treble control and various input drive levels (noise bursts between setting changes).

Next clip uses amp/EQ #3 (which also included FM transmission and a tube radio tuner in the signal chain). This clip doesn’t include the dry mix (it is the same mix from the first clip), it goes right into different processed versions. As you can see (hear), this effect is more colored, because of the radio being added to the chain.


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