- Overloud
- Vintage Keyboard FX
- v2.2.16
- APP/AU/VST/RTAS
- Mac OS X
Overloud Vintage Keyboard FX (Mac) is a virtual rack packed with outstanding models of vintage analog effect processors, especially suited for keyboard players. It captures the sound of the original masters, which were often the key element in defining a classic instrument’s unique ‘voice’.
Overloud Vintage Keyboard FX (Mac) is a must for any keyboard player and for anyone who wants to add a vintage colour to the recordings! If you cannot get that kind of warmth from your sample library or your synthesizer, or even on a recorded track, VKFX enriches all your tones and allows you to recreate the sounds of countless records.
Key Features
- Highly CPU efficient coding and module layout means that users can load many instances of VKFX without the fear of watching a system’s processor overload appear, in the certain knowledge that processing quality is first class.
- Simultaneous editing of all processors is available via a friendly and intuitive interface presented in the form of a rack of independent modules.
- Module order can be rearranged by simply dragging and dropping modules to where they’re needed, giving users fast and total control over the effects.
- All rates and times can be sync’d to the DAW or internally timed, or left independent for a more ‘analog’ approach.
- All parameters are automatable. All parameters are assigned to MIDI controllers.
- A flexible file management system allows one, several or all modules to be loaded and saved – enabling easy mixing and matching of module presets saved from different sessions.
Back to the roots
VKFX was originally developed and produced in collaboration with SCARBEE who had the vision to create a dedicated keyboard FX suite.
Overdrive
The harmonic distortion produced by a valve amplifier when it’s overdriven is an attractive sound to most musicians (but not their neighbours at 3am!). Unfortunately, it’s generally only achieved by turning the amp up loud. For those of us looking for a little dirt in our sound, the 70s saw the birth of stomp boxes offering ‘solid state’ distortion.
Keyboard players of the time were able to get a very cool distortion sound when running their tine based electric piano into a classic twin channel valve amp, or their tone wheel based organ into a rotating speaker system with a valve amp. As keyboard rigs got smaller and amps became more powerful (and solid state) more than a few keyboard players attempted to replicate the valve sound of their vintage amp or rotating speaker system via a distortion pedal of some kind. One of the most popular overdrive pedals of all time was a small green stomp box, a source of inspiration in the design of the VKFX Overdrive module.
Delay
The Delay module harkens back to the days of tape echo. The original tape echo effect was created by recording an input signal to tape via a tape head and then replaying that signal through another tape head. By placing several heads at different distances along the tape path, they were also able to create different syncopations of delay depending on which heads were monitored.
One feature of tape delays which was lost in the digital move forward was the effect on the sound of the tape itself. In tape delays, the signal is delayed by keeping it on the magnetic tape for a time. For every repetition of the delay, the signal is recorded to and played back from the tape. The more repetitions, the more intense is the effect of the tape on the sound.
The VKFX delay utilises an intelligent tape simulation algorithm which reproduces both the compression effects and frequency response of analogue tape for each repetition of the delayed signal.