Take a listen to see how Riverside Multistage Drive works alongside Deco Tape Saturation & Doubletracker. Strymon noisemaking nerd Ethan Tufts (http://youtube.com/stateshirt) plays a few Riverside & Deco audio examples on a Fender Strat and Tele. Signal path is Riverside » Deco » Strymon BigSky (speaker cab filter only, no reverb).
Learn more here:
http://strymon.net/riverside
http://strymon.net/deco
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A few notes from Ethan:
One of the things I really like about the Riverside Multistage Drive is it's extremely wide range of harmonically complex drive sounds. Because of Riverside's multistage topology, it goes well beyond simple overdrive pedal territory. Riverside can be truly thought of as an "amp in a box" pedal. Not only can you achieve subtle overdrives, you can get rich saturated distortions, and a full range of tones you'd find in a great tube amplifier.
Couple Riverside with our Deco Tape Saturation & Doubletracker pedal, and those overdriven tones become even more spacious and wide. I'm a big fan of the Riverside/Deco combo, so I decided to spend a day creating some audio examples using this setup. In the video below, the signal path is simply Riverside » Deco » Strymon BigSky (speaker cab filter only, no reverb) » recording interface. Since I'm using BigSky's cab emulation and not an amplifier, you can get a feel for the type of amp sounds possible with Riverside. And I'm using Deco as a tape-based swiss army knife—providing many types of tape flanging, tape chorusing, tape echo, and tape saturation.
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Riverside: Infinite Sweet Spot.
Riverside is the culmination of a thorough analysis of numerous analog and vacuum tube circuits. Our goal? To deliver a new world of harmonically rich, incredibly versatile, tube-inspired drive sounds. We didn't want to build just another distortion or overdrive. We knew we must examine what has been done, and bring a new approach to the world of drive sounds.
Riverside’s continuously variable circuit tuning dynamically tweaks multiple parameters under the hood so that the sweet spot follows you at any gain setting. As you turn the Drive knob, Riverside makes continuous adjustments, tuning the circuit for optimum tone. This results in an incredibly versatile drive pedal that is equally capable of providing sparking cleans, mild overdrives, high-gain leads, and heavy saturated distortions.
Deco: Mid-Century Maverick.
Our journey begins with the early recording studios of the ’50s and ’60s. The introduction of reel-to-reel tape machines and the creative engineers that used them brought on some of the fattest sounds imaginable. These early machines really were the first effect pedals—they just wouldn’t have fit on your pedalboard! From the inherent warmth and luscious tape saturation—to the forgotten art of how these machines were manipulated—they are capable of creating a huge range of beautiful, distinctive, and enveloping sounds.
Deco brings this original inspiration back, giving you these vintage tape effects from the earliest recording studios, right on your pedalboard. Deco's Tape Saturation smooths out your sound with familiar and delicious tape compression and saturation, while fattening it with subtle tape-driven transparent overdrive. The Doubletracker provides the power to shift your sound in many ways, easily allowing you to achieve syrupy slapback tape echoes, psychedelic tape flanging, and gorgeous tape chorusing sounds.