Decapitator Analog Saturation Effects SoundToys P.O. Box 528 Burlington, VT 05401 Phone: 802-951-9700 Fax: 802-951-9799 Phone: 802-951-9700 Technical Support Web: www.soundtoys.com/support Email: support@soundtoys.
C O N T E N T S 3
I N T R O 3
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THANKS! Installation Basics 4
USING DECAPITATOR 4
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Style Drive Auto Gain Punish Output Mix Low Cut Thump Tone High Cut Steep FOR MORE DETAILS 10
TRADEMARK INFO 11
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I N T R O THANKS! First off we want to say a big THANK YOU for your purchase of Decapitator. We know there are an awful lot of plug-ins for you to choose from and we are truly grateful that you have chosen to spend your hard earned money on our products. We take a lot of pride in our work and we sincerely hope that you find our plug-ins inspirational and musically useful. Installation If you’re reading this manual, you’ve PROBABLY already installed Decapitator successfully on your system.
U S I N G D E C A P I T A T O R First, let’s get out of the way what Decapitator is NOT. It’s NOT a guitar amp modeler, and it’s not a tape saturation plug-in. So what is it? The inspiration for Decapitator is the sound of analog gear being pushed hard to the point of saturation and beyond. Something old-school engineers would do all the time, whether it was overdriving the mic preamps on their massively expensive mixing consoles, or racks of outboard gear. Decapitator aims to emulate that sound.
of these channels (and much more!) resides here at the SoundToys lab. We looked at and listened to a lot, and gave you what we thought were some of the coolest sounds. Here is a guide to what was modeled*: A: Modeled after Ampex® 350 tape drive preamp. The Ampex 350 tape recorder was a studio workhorse in the 1950s, back in the early days of Elvis and Johnny Cash; Sun, Stax, and Chess Records. Eventually these old beasts were replaced by newer, better (really?) machines.
true here. The sound is warm and punchy, and is especially useful to add some attitude to drums or other percussive instruments. P: Modeled after Thermionic Culture® Culture Vulture® pentode setting. This style models an overdriven Pentode tube, which is commonly used in the output stage of guitar and other amplifiers. It is usually characterized by odd harmonic distortion, and because of that, has a different sound from triodes amplifiers (which have more even harmonics). We just like the sound.
Punish If you’ve maxed out your drive control and you still want more distortion go ahead and press the Punish button. We know you want to! This kicks in an extra 20 dB of gain, so things will be loud AND distorted. Output The Output knob turns DOWN the output level. When Auto is switched on, the gain is adjusted automatically when the Drive is adjusted. If you want total control, or just want things as loud as possible, switch off Auto and use this control.
Thump The Thump switch will add a few dB of low frequency boost right at the Low Cut frequency. This is similar to the ‘head bump’ of analog tape recorders, and is one of the reasons that recording to analog tape can sound so fat. Keep in mind that switching on Thump will INCREASE the amount of low frequencies that hit the saturation circuit.
common complaint of some distortion devices. We’ve decided to give you total control over the amount of ‘Fizz’ you’d like to leave in, or take out. Steep The Steep switch alters the slope of the High Cut filter. When it is OFF, the High Cut filter is a very gentle 6 dB per octave rolloff. When it is ON, a super-steep 30 dB per octave filter is switched in. Even though Decapitator is NOT a guitar amp emulator, the Steep setting IS useful for emulating the sound of a guitar amplifier speaker cabinet.
F O R M O R E D E T A I L S If you made it this far, you deserve a medal! Now that you’ve taken the time to learn all about Decapitator, go to it! Have fun, experiment, and make great sounds! We offer free technical support for all registered users. We love to hear from you, but if you are having problems, please first try to look in the manual or on the support page of our web site for an answer.
T R A D E M A R K I N F O SoundToys, Decapitator and their respective logos are all trademarks of SoundToys, Inc. *All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners, which are in no way associated or affiliated with SoundToys. These trademarks are used only for historical reference or to identify products whose sounds or tone were studied in the development of our plug-ins.
