RE: 'slow gear' effect

[Mech <mech@m3ch.net>]

At 3:51 PM +0000 12/7/07, Goddard, Duncan wrote:
>
>I am absolutely baffled by boss' continued 
>reluctance to re-issue or update this little 
>gem. perhaps the behringer knock-off is the kick 
>they need.
>btw, I paid £25 for my original, in denmark street in 1983.

Well, while they didn't continue packaging SG's 
as little stomps, they did continue to develop 
the technology.  The Poly Slow Gear effect has 
been a part of Roland's VG series for a while.

My biggest gripe with the original Slow Gear was 
always that it was monophonic.  In other words, 
it sounded fine if you hit a chord, fading in 
from zero to full volume without a problem.  But 
if you slowly picked the individual notes of that 
chord, the first string would set off the 
envelope follower, which would then remain wide 
open for every other string in the chord.  So, 
the first note would fade in, but every other 
note would end up being plucked as normal.  In 
addition, depending on your playing style, this 
could also mean that you could occasionally wind 
up with mixed faded and plucked notes even when 
playing monophonic leads, since the envelope 
follower might not recognize that you've stopped 
one note and moved on to the next.

Given those limitations, I chucked my old Slow 
Gear decades ago, and, like Per, decided that it 
was more flexible merely to use a volume pedal 
and control the swells myself.

Then, with the advent of the divided (GK, etc.) 
guitar pickup, Roland revamped the concept into a 
polyphonic Slow Gear -- essentially six SG's, 
dedicating one Slow Gear to each the six strings. 
I hear the effect is a little dicey on the VG-88 
(where it was originally introduced) and I can 
certainly say that it's a tad weak on my WP-20g 
(which is the main reason I bought the darn 
thing).  But on the VG-99 it works beautifully; 
Roland finally got the kinks worked out of the 
technology.

Not only can you swell picked chords beautifully, 
but it works really well if you apply it to a 
transposed guitar in addition to the one you're 
playing.  So, you can play one note normally, 
then have a transposed note (say, up a fifth) 
fade in as a harmony over the note you're 
playing.  Sweet!

Oh, and on another note, for anybody into 
hardware pedals and doing a lot of swells, you've 
got to check out the Yamaha UD-Stomp, or even the 
little bargain Magicstomp.  While they won't do 
the SG effect itself, the Echo/Chorus presets 
designed for volume swells (especially the Alan 
Holdsworth presets) give the cleanest, most 
wonderful, spacey, blooming sounds shy of a 
four-figure rack unit.  I've got a UD, but 
grabbed a couple extra Magicstomp II's when they 
were being discontinued, and use them dedicated 
for their Delay sounds.  Just beautiful when used 
in conjunction with a swell pedal....

        --m.
--
_____
"take one step outside yourself. the whole path 
lasts no longer than one step..."