Overloud Free Plugin

[Osman Briseno]

TheGem MODULA includes three of the most iconic modulation units in a single plugin. In addition to offering the most faithful emulation available today, it allows to extend the original tone capabilities by adding many features which are not available on the analog units.

With the Dual-Mono Mode you can process separately the left and the right channels with different settings, in order to increase the stereo depth.

Parameters can be linked individually using the custom link panel.

For example, the modulation speed can increase during the transients.

Or the amount of effect can be decreased on louder passages to increase their clarity, while keeping a sense of wider space on the softer parts.

Thanks to the analog modeling design, it is possible to virtually mod the original circuit and change the LFO and filters behavior while keeping the character of the unit.

You can experiment with LFO shapes different than the original, to change the motion of the modulation, or add resonances to transform the chorus into a flanger.

As a second step, we run a set of test signals through the hardware unit to capture its dynamic, harmonic and frequency response at different settings. Then we will use these measurements to fine-tune our model and take into account all the tolerances of the components and the subtle behaviour that cannot be replicated using an analytic model only.

That was enough to tickle my interest. In parallel to this, they added a few extra 2020s features like side-chain filter, parallel processing, accessible knee settings (DC Threshold), a knob to blend the harmonics to taste and a few additional workflow features.

It is true that you can buy four or five different plugins and have four or five different approximations of this sound in your DAW. But the ability to change the behaviour of the unit at the flick of a switch is pretty amazing in my humble opinion. You can quickly audition which unit sounds best in a specific scenario.

And all of these options can get you all the sounds you could desire by tuning the harmonic content, the input saturation and the output saturation. Yes, because the output knobs on the bottom left provide an additional layer of saturation (like the real hardware unit) but you also have the last bottom right knob clean output knob to level match (not like the real unit). Pretty nice right?

I am pretty sure a lot of you know already that the Fairchild, in Time Constant mode 1, is great on drums, it can pump and saturate in a very nice and exciting way. But the last modes; 4, 5 and especially 6 are some of the rarest and most interesting features. Not every compressor can offer that type of behaviour. And it is typically the type of behaviour that can help create a nice sense of depth (back and front) in a song.

The Fairchild 670 is doing all of this for you with its various release times options and the program dependent modes. It also works beautifully for synths, pads or bass. Anything that needs to support and be tucked under something else. This is a nice way to help your EQ moves work even more in your favour since the compression is a dynamic process while EQ is static. When the static processing and the dynamic processing work together, it becomes a beautifully balanced thing.

The advantage of the Overloud Comp 670 Gem is that it offers you this, emulated in a very good and faithful way while also giving you the option to fine-tune the sound with a precision that is not possible with the hardware.

For vintage keyboard sounds, I started with a quest of a nice Boss CE-1 plugin, and am now looking for a MXR Phase 90 plugin replika and probably soon for a cry baby wah-wah. I planned to test these effects in the Overloud TH-U Full guitar bundle. However, there is also an Overloud VKFX for keyboards.

Combinations of these effects with some vintage keyboards are well known: e.g. Wurli and Boss CE-1 (Supertramp), Rhodes and MXR Phase 90 (Billy Joel and also Steely Dan I think), Clavinet and Mutron III (Stevie Wonder) and probably many others.

I use VKFX. I believe it was orignally developed by Scarbee along with Vintage Keys (which went to NI and VKFX went to Overloud). I also have TH-U, which I like a lot, except for their Mutron effect, I have to sue Amplitube for that. Anyway just because I have been using it for so long and it is just simpler and geared to keys I continue to use VKFX for my keyboard sounds and think it does a great job.

Tommo, first the guitar signal goes into the interface. Are you able to get a good signal there? Meaning, does it light up the green light on your INTERFACE (not in the plug-in), with maybe an occasional orange light at the loudest notes?

Hi tommo,

afaik many interfaces have an instrument input you need to use if you plug the guitar directly into the interface. This is called Hi-Z-Mode or Hi-Z Input. Sometimes you need to activate that mode in the driver. This is the case with the RME Babyface I use for example.

There was a great explanation in a recent Neural DSP video for that kind of situation, here is the link to it: _pPfY

I have a Focusrite myself (2i2). First indeed check if you have the lastest drivers. Then check (in the Focusrite manual) if the impendance is correct for your guitar at the input. I suspect it is. Then adjust so you get in the green with the Focusrite.

So I am pretty much stuck with a weak signal going into the ampsim. I guess I could compensate for that within the software, for example by putting a clean boost plugin (ideally flat in frequency response?) before the amp simulator plugin.

PS: and I totally agree with you on your previous posts about guitar wiring. It would be amazing to have a stereo output capturing two pickups at once - among other things this would generate so many mixing/re-amping possibilities!

Even even better in my view is something like the AMT legends series preamp pedals - run the guitar into that, let your main tone generation be done in the analog world and then run your cabinet and room IRs in the DAW along with whatever post effects you fancy.

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