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The filter can be
manually modulated with the knob or pedal, envelope follower, or LFO.
All three modulation methods are possible at the same time for the wackiest
effects. The knob is great for just grabbing and twisting at a given moment,
as is the pedal for hand-free guitar or keyboard playing. This can be
the ultimate wah-wah pedal that you can use for any instrument or prerecorded
track.
The envelope filter has just three very effective controls: Depth or threshold,
Release time (or the time it takes the filter to return to an unmodulated
state) and a Band Select button for choosing any combination of three
frequency bands the envelope follower will trigger on. For the most part,
I always use All Bands since I want the filter to follow all frequencies.
A nice addition would be an external input for the envelope follower,
but then the unit would start to compete with much more expensive units
like the Sherman FilterBank or the Mustronics Mutator.
The LFO frequency range is from 0.05 to 30 Hz, with five waveforms available.
I think the LFO waves chosen make the Filter Queen sound different from
other filters I have used. There is no sine wave, and at first I thought
this strange, but I soon found the sawtooth wave works the same—just
more linear and a little less subtle. The sawtooth and inverse sawtooth
waves give you either sudden or slow trailing, edged sweep envelopes,
and the square wave is good for an on/off, gating effect. The triangle
has a pronounce peak in the middle of the sweep evolution, while the random
mode just mixes and matches all the waves together for a chaotic or random
modulating effect.
EQ Killer
EQ Killer, the second of the two MODS I reviewed, is a 3-band equalizer
with a twist. You can boost the low, mid or high bands up to +6 dB and
cut to infinity. Each of the three bands has the large momentary and smaller
latching push buttons to “band kill” each band separately. There
is another pair of buttons to toggle the entire unit in and out of circuit.
Instead of separate frequency controls for each band, the EQ Killer uses
two crossover controls called Low X-Over and High X-Over. Low X-Over adjusts
from 40 to 2k Hz to set the crossover point between the low- and the mid-band
sections. High X-Over adjusts from 200 to 20k Hz for setting the crossover
between the mid- and high-band sections. Called me old-fashioned, but
I would prefer to just have three separate frequency controls, one for
each band—then you could have three distinctly separate EQ sounds
ready to go without overlap. I also would have put the momentary engage
buttons at the bottom of the front-panel unit instead of in the center,
for better access. The EQ Killer also uses RCA jacks only, another problem
for me in the studio having to adapt to 1¼4-inch or XLRs.
I found the EQ Killer to be really the tool for setting steady-state filter
shapes for vocal, synths and percussion sounds. The unit has an effects
send loop where the killed bands can be sent to another effect, channel
or speaker in the case of club mixer. Like the Filter Queen, the Killer
has both input and output bicolored LED level indicators and power-on
LED. The Killer has two sets of inputs you can toggle between or use has
a master bypass when only one input is used.
With loads of setup examples in the multilanguage instruction manuals
and at Electrix’s Web site, both the Filter Queen and EQ Killer offer
a lot at $299. With their powerful and unique all-analog processing, these
little units should be mainstays in any DJ’s or remixer’s rack.
Electrix, a division of IVL Technologies, 6710 Bertram Place, Victoria,
BC, Canada V8M 1Z6; 250/544-4091;
electrixinfo@ivl.com; www.electrixpro.com.
Barry Rudolph
is an L.A.-based recording engineer. Visit his Web site at www.barryrudolph.com.
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Reprinted with permission from Mix Magazine, August, 2000
© 2000, Intertec Publishing, A Primedia Company All Rights Reserved
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