Hello Matt

Am 22.01.2012 19:06, schrieb Matt Fretton:

> Is the A-136 a simpler and smaller version of the A-137-1 or are there
> more significant differences I don't have the space for both...

The A136 is basically like a guitar distortion stomp box going over the
top - and with the possibility to have different distortion levels for
the positive and the negative parts of the signal. Technically you may
think it is a compressor/expander with zero attack and release rate and
separate ratio and threshold for both half waves.

The A137 is like four simplified A136 stacked up in series. Simplified
because you do not have separated access to the two half waves. Also you
do not have access to the parameters of the individual stages. Instead
of that you control parameters which affect all stage the same way
(exception 'Folding Level', which decides how "deep" the signals is fed
into the four stage chain).

Sound wise: The A136 can(!) be a very very good dynamic distortion box,
but it is not easy to handle. The parameters interact very much, and
very often one wrong set parameter spoils the effect of another parameter.

The A137 is a little easier to handle, but also here the "damping"
interaction between different parameters should be obeyed. To my
experience, it is better not(!) to modulate the A137 with CVs, but
instead already modulate the signal level of the signal, which feeds the
A137.

For both modules, I like to use velocity CV, but with quite low
modulation amount. I like to use them for external polyphonic signals
(epiano, synths, guitar).

Florian