Here is a pretty sound not often heard. A vibrato circuit! Not to be
confused with tremolo, which is cyclical volume variation.
Vibrato is frequency modulation, the changing of the pitch of a signal.
Historically, tremolo-equipped amps first appeared in the
late 1940’s, followed by Fender’s 1955 flagship amp, the Tremolux.
In the late ‘50’s a company called Magnatone released the first
amps with real pitch-shifting. They sounded pretty cool. As if each
note had a little angelic waver around it. If you’ve ever heard a Buddy Holly
recording, you’ve heard a Magnatone.
You hardly ever see amps with pitch-shift Vibrato. It’s a complex and
labor-intensive process to wire. Fortunately, its a snap to program
one in the Axe. In this patch I took a Bandpass Filter and attached an LFO to its
‘frequency’ parameter, and tweaked the curve for a strong, clear vibrato.
I encourage you to go into this patch’s LFO’s response curve screen and play with the
curve setting. You’ll see how dramatically you can alter the signal. Fun stuff!
Its mixed hot so you can hear the effect clearly (Pitch Vibrato is a subtle effect).
