Help making this tone - Frightened Rabbit Content

[Unicorn Warrior]

So I’ve been into these guys since the death of Hutchinson. Unfortunately, I never heard about them until he passed. Passionate and poetic to say the least.

Anyway, their guitar textures are often subtly great, but there is one lead line that i’d like to figure out

This guy is playing a jazzmaster into a board which consists of a Strymon deco, big sky, timeline, and pitch factor...I know there’s verb on there, but any clue to what else is happening?

The sound is the lead at the 2:20 mark

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bBdsY_zsv_U

[fuzzjunkie]

So I’ve been into these guys since the death of Hutchinson. Unfortunately, I never heard about them until he passed. Passionate and poetic to say the least.

Anyway, their guitar textures are often subtly great, but there is one lead line that i’d like to figure out

This guy is playing a jazzmaster into a board which consists of a Strymon deco, big sky, timeline, and pitch factor...I know there’s verb on there, but any clue to what else is happening?

The sound is the lead at the 2:20 mark

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bBdsY_zsv_U

I don’t know for sure what he is using, but I can get that tone, or one very close to it, with a Roger Mayer Voodoo Vibe and an Eventide Space. It’s a tone I like a lot. The RMVV is set to vibrato and the Space to cathedral reverb, or canyon, something big and spacious.

I would imagine he’s using the Strymon Deco and setting it to chorus with the mix at or near 100% (chorus is just vibrato with the dry signal mixed in and delayed) and the “wobble” control high as well, then a big reverb setting on the Big Sky. I usually add a bit of echo too, but it’s not necessary.

If he’s not using the Deco, then it’s probably the Pitch Factor set as a vibrato. De-tune the pitch up and down a few cents. I would use two voices, delay them slightly and add a fair bit of modulation to the mix and then a big reverb.

[Unicorn Warrior]

So I’ve been into these guys since the death of Hutchinson. Unfortunately, I never heard about them until he passed. Passionate and poetic to say the least.

Anyway, their guitar textures are often subtly great, but there is one lead line that i’d like to figure out

This guy is playing a jazzmaster into a board which consists of a Strymon deco, big sky, timeline, and pitch factor...I know there’s verb on there, but any clue to what else is happening?

The sound is the lead at the 2:20 mark

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bBdsY_zsv_U

I don’t know for sure what he is using, but I can get that tone, or one very close to it, with a Roger Mayer Voodoo Vibe and an Eventide Space. It’s a tone I like a lot. The RMVV is set to vibrato and the Space to cathedral reverb, or canyon, something big and spacious.

I would imagine he’s using the Strymon Deco and setting it to chorus with the mix at or near 100% (chorus is just vibrato with the dry signal mixed in and delayed) and the “wobble” control high as well, then a big reverb setting on the Big Sky. I usually add a bit of echo too, but it’s not necessary.

If he’s not using the Deco, then it’s probably the Pitch Factor set as a vibrato. De-tune the pitch up and down a few cents. I would use two voices, delay them slightly and add a fair bit of modulation to the mix and then a big reverb.

I strongly suspected the deco had something to do with it. Didn’t think about a vibe pedal achieving that. What space settings would you reccomend?

[fuzzjunkie]

For reverb I would find a cathedral type setting. On the Space I have a couple of big Hall reverb with modulation settings. Dual reverb and Blackhole can be a good starting point too. The Dark Matter/Size Matters presets tweaked to something usable maybe? Just anything big and spacious that doesn’t cloud things up too much.

The reason I think it’s the Deco is because the initial tone is clear, big and focused and not a shrill warble that you can get from vibratos. I’m sure he started with a tape-chorus setting and dialed it in from there with the wobble and the mix settings up high.

You could do that with the Pitchfactor, but a lot more tweaking involved and I think he was probably more a song writer than a knob twiddler, so he would have come across a sound he liked and been inspired to use it rather than searching and searching for the “right” tone. That would happen a lot quicker and easier with the Deco.

Uni-Vibe units, most people stick with the classic Hendrix and Trower chorus settings and never venture to the vibrato side. There are a lot of cool tones there. Hendrix did use the vibrato side on one song, but I can’t remember which one. It’s really good for those bell like or piano tones though. I have an analog delay unit, the Yamaha e-1010, and it can do something like that too at a chorus type setting with the mix at 100%. I never got much out of the Boss Vibrato pedal, the V-2 or whatever it was? Just doesn’t sound the same.

[Unicorn Warrior]

Thanks for that! I’m beginning to have a love/hate relationship with the space. There are some sounds that I feel I can’t live without, but it’s a ton of knob twisting for me to only utilize a fraction of its functions. Finding a setting is often magical but takes a long journey. I’ve gotten better at it. Having never tried the bigsky makes me wonder what’s on the other side. In a perfect world I would have both.

I also think the deco may be more useful than the others for my sound in the long run and am hoping to grab one soon. If I come across one in the next bit I will report back and see how close we can get it.

[fuzzjunkie]

I was marginally interested in the Deco when it first came out, but I have and love the El Capistan and the Time Factor has a decent tape echo too, so I never got one.

I watched a couple of YouTube videos and found a couple where they almost dialed in that sound, but didn’t quite get there. I wanted to reach into the video and turn the knobs myself, but that’s not reality.

Anyway, from those videos, what you want to do is use the Tape Chorus setting, that is the Lag control 30-45%, set the switch to Bounce (Bounce is more full sounding and closer than Invert and the other one), have the Wobble setting from 65-85%, (So a bit lower than I expected) the Mix setting isn’t at 100% it’s more like 75-80%, and I think that does it unless I am missing something?

One video the guy gets close for 30 seconds or so, but never turns the knobs off 100% so he has the mix and wobble too high. I think he was on Invert too. Similar but not really there, too wobbly. The other one is I think “The Captain” dude and he almost hits that tone exactly while he’s dwindling the knobs and flipping switches for 2-3 seconds, but he doesn’t settle there and he’s off to something else.

Edit- I keep meaning to try this on the El Capistan but I keep forgetting.