Welcome back dear readers, to the

Transcription

1 Welcome back dear readers, to the land of the Nemesis. Last week, we talked with the engineers from Source Audio who designed the Nemesis, and learned a little bit about the story and the process behind this new kid on the block. Now, we are going to take it through its paces, and see how it sounds in a variety of different situations that one may encounter. I have been playing the Nemesis almost daily for about a week now, and I was able to unlock some really cool secrets buried inside this pedal that I m going to share today. This the with this incredible piece of kit. CHAPTER I: STEREO ELECTRIC GUITAR (WITH LESLIE!) thing I look at when reviewing 20 TONE TALK // Getting to Know Your Nemesis Part II: To Space and Beyond

2 a delay pedal is whether it has stereo ins and outs. I can deal with a lack of more in-depth controls, but stereo ins and outs are almost a must, because on occasion I like to run a stereo rig. As many of you regular readers probably know, I have a Leslie speaker that I like to run in addition sometimes with my trusty Hi-Tone DR-30. It makes cleans sound huge, and distortions enormous. The secret to making this sound really big, is adding a stereo delay to add variation between the two signals. It really opens up the sound, and really makes it guitar track. The left side is the Hi-Tone DR- 30 miked with a Shure SM57; the right side is the Leslie 147 miked with the Roswell Audio K47 up on the treble horn. The two tracks were recorded at the same time, and panned left and right. To properly hear this ToneReport.com 21

3 demo, I suggest using headphones. First, we ll play the un-delayed signal: And now the delayed signal: Notice how the delays bubble into each other, and add a sense of space that wasn t there before. When I stop playing, I intentionally left the track recording to hear the repeats bounce between left and right, a phenomenon known as ping-ponging. Thankfully, on the Nemesis, the intensity of the ping-ponging can be adjusted, so players don t have a disorienting delay between the two amps. CHAPTER II: WE WANT THE DIRT! Now, we jump ship from stereo land for just this once, to see how the Nemesis readers are likely running a mono setup, so this demo will appeal to the vast majority. The settings are the exact same as above, with the Nemesis running on Tape mode. For dirt, I turned to old faithful, the Vick Audio 73 Ram s Head Big Muff, to add to the general girth and size of this tone. As before we re going to start with the dry tone: 22 TONE TALK // Getting to Know Your Nemesis Part II: To Space and Beyond

4 And now the delayed tone: As seen yet again, the Nemesis adds a whole lot of space and depth to the tone, making the already huge Big Muff sound even bigger a hard combo to beat! CHAPTER III: IN SPACE, NO ONE CAN HEAR YOU STRUM When it comes to effects, I love two things, versatility and practicality. A part of me wants to use and abuse effects beyond just the pedalboard, hence this next demo. This demo was recorded dry, using my old Yamaha acoustic and the Roswell K47. Since I didn t have an XLR to quarter-inch converter, or a phantom power unit for the line level signal (the K47 is a condenser mic, which requires phantom power to operate), I decided to get a little crafty; I took the recorded track, and re-amped it back through the Nemesis and into the DAW. Unfortunately, this led to just the slightest hint of feedback (not the good kind). The preset I used was one of my favorites on the Nemesis, the Helix, which is an much more expensive units. Here is the dry signal: And the wet signal: Spacey! Let s move on. ToneReport.com 23

5 CHAPTER IV: DIY ADT One such pedal that capitalized itself on the principal of ADT is the Keeley 30ms. This is an excellent pedal by an excellent dude, but today I wanted to try and replicate this effect on the Nemesis in a standard DI setting. ADT stands for Automatic Double Tracking, and was pioneered by the geniuses at Abbey Road Studios in the late 60s. The way it works is, it feeds a very short delay in tandem with the incoming signal. That delayed signal is then panned left or right, while the source signal is panned opposite. When having two of the exact same signals going on at the same time, it effectively creates a mono signal. The short delay gives differing information in both ears, and the mind differentiates the two tracks! Since the ADT effect is essentially a delay, I set one up using the Nemesis set to a very short delay time with the feedback off. Here is my dry signal. As always, listeners wanting to hear the true stereo effect will need headphones: Readers wearing headphones could most likely hear different information in both ears. If not, try to A/B the dry and wet clips to try and hear the difference between the two. Notice how the wet track is a lot wider, and slightly tinny (because of the slapback quality of having the delays set this high). CHAPTER IV-B: LEFTOVER NIGHT These are a couple of clips that I did just for fun, and they didn t really make the a stereo DI experiment on a m9 chord, to show a bit more of the lovely helix mode. And the second clip is my trusty analog synth, the Arturia Minibrute, running through the tape delay setting on a bassy, And here is my wet signal: I hope readers enjoyed a dip into the world of the weird, wacky, and wonderful Source Audio Nemesis. This is a delay pedal for the 21st century, and it s quite literally packed with features, knobs, and buttons to satisfy any craving, whether it be warm, noisy, pristine, or just plain screwed up. 24 TONE TALK // Getting to Know Your Nemesis Part II: To Space and Beyond