Genuine Soundware Plugins (Die Funky Maschine ZD6, Electric Grand EG70, GS-201 Tape Echo, MrRay73 Mark II, Reverb Type4, The Ultimate Virtual Tonewheel Organ VB3, KeyPerformer)

Electric Grand EG70 1.0
The CP-70 was a portable electric piano invented during the seventies by the japanese company Yamaha, also makers of renowned fine classic grand pianos. It was made for the touring musician who wanted to take an acoustic piano on the stage. It's a rock solid instrument that splits into two parts for better transportability. The structure is based on the keyboard and mechanics of a classic grandpiano but with a smaller harp, less strings and shorter than a classic baby grand. There's no soundboard, and every note has its own piezoelectric pickup. The main preamplifier offers a basic 3-band equalizer and a tremolo effect. This piano had a significant role in the pop music of the seventies and the eighties, featuring in songs by well known musicians like Stevie Wonder, Genesis, George Duke, Simple Minds, etc. It is now back on the stage thanks to the british band "Keane", you can see it in the video of the song "Everybody's changing". Every modern digital keyboard offering a wide variety of timbres has a patch inspired to the sound of the CP piano, and sometimes it's still preferred in genres like rock and pop where the producers want a brighter and more prominent piano sound.
Plugin Description
EG70 is a physical modeling simulation of a CP-70 electroacoustic baby grand touring piano.
Main features:
- Full Polyphony (73 notes)
- Adjustable sympathetic resonances
- Realistic response to keyboard dynamics
- Adjustable global tuning
- Four dynamic curves available
- Realistic control panel with active EQ and Tremolo effect
- Stereo tremolo mode (auto-pan)
- Adjustable note decay and release lengths
- Built-in stereo digital reverb
- On-screen help tips and readout values
- Low memory and CPU power needed
- Easy MIDI-Learn feature
MrRay73 Mark II 2.0.3
EG70 has a very natural response to keyboard dynamics and to player's style. You'll hear the benefits of physical modeling mostly when the sustain pedal is in use. The sound is warm and metallic at the same time, unpredictable, rich and natural like only a real piano can be.
MrRay73 Mark II is a digital simulation of the famous american electro-mechanical piano of the seventies, invented during World War II by a music teacher, Harold B. Rhodes (1910 - 2000), and widely used in almost all musical genres ranging from soul/black music to jazz, blues, modern and pop. This instrument has rapidly become a legend, and is still used today, altough samples have replaced the real thing so that very often music producers use huge sample libraries or hardware keyboards / workstations to achieve this kind of sonority, and often the result is a cold and 'dead' sound, with no vitality, no warmth, nothing that even compares to the unpredictability and genuineness of the real thing.
In 2007 an enterprising and far-seeing american businessman has started a new Company with the aim to re-manufacture the piano using the same recipe of the old factory, employing the same ingredients and offering the same "taste" of the vintage instrument. The new "Mark 7" piano was presented at the NAMM show and it was a big success. It's on the market again, after about 20 years, with the same name, same "soul" but largely improved under many important technical aspects.
In a similar manner, MrRay73 Mark II is the second version of MrRay73, after two years from its introduction to the public, but with a huge difference in sound and functionality. While the old MrRay73 was one of the first successfull simulations of such an instrument, capable of offering similar vitality, warmth and richness of the real thing, the new "Mark II" version brings many new improvements, first of all for what concerns "THE SOUND".
As opposite to sample libraries, a real-time reproduction of a certain sound has the ability to interact with the musician, producing different behaviours from time to time. Hardly you will hear exactly the same "waveform" twice. MrRay73 Mark II is a complete digital reproduction of the real instrument, with all the moving parts that, together, generate to the sound.
Summary of the main features:
* Full Polyphony (73 notes E - E)
* No note-stealing
* Adjustable single sound elements (metal, wood, pedal and damper noises)
* Sympathetic resonance and harp vibration
* Sustain pedal re-pedaling feature
* Six-stage vintage style Phaser effect
* Dual mode Tremolo effect
* Power amp simulation (Suitcase model)
* Adjustable wear of mallets and other elements (Piano Age)
* Stretch tuning or Equal Temperament
* Four velocity curves plus an adjustable "Dynamic range" level
* Fully Midi controllable with MIDI-Learn function
* Very Low CPU and memory usage
Die Funky Maschine ZD6 1.1
It was back in the fifties when German inventor Ernst Zacharias invented one of the funkiest keyboards of all times. At first the intention was to make a portable version of a cembalo, but it soon turned into one of the most used keyboards in rock and pop music. You will certainly recognize it in the famous pop song "Superstition", and in many other funky tunes of the seventies. Many police and investigation story movies and TV shows of the 70's and the early 80's had music themes based on funky accompaniments made with the D6, a slap bass and drums. This instrument can reproduce the sound of an electric guitar and can be treated with the same effects used by guitarists (wahwah, distortion, phaser, chorus, etc.) for both rhythmic and melodic textures, since it is actually based on a set of 60 strings and two humbucker pickups very similar to those used in electric guitars.
Plugin Description
ZD6 is a physical modeling simulation of a vintage "D6" stringed electric piano.
Main features:
- Full Polyphony (60 notes)
- Sympathetic resonances
- Realistic response to keyboard dynamics and aftertouch
- Octave transpose (1 oct. up, 1 oct. down)
- Adjustable global tuning
- Four dynamic curves available
- Realistic control panel with switches for active EQ and pickup selection
- Adjustable damper level and instrument volume
- Wah-Wah effect modeled after the famous JH-1 american Wah pedal
- Manual wah, LFO wah, auto-wah
- Distortion effect
- Eight-stage Phaser effect
- On-screen help tips and readout values
- Very low memory and CPU power needed
- Easy MIDI-Learn feature
- FX version included
GS-201 Tape Echo 1.1.3
Tape echo effects were invented towards the end of the fifties. Presumably the very first tape echo machine was invented by Charlie Watkins of London, England, in 1958. It was based on a small loop of 1/4" tape onto which audio was recorded by a magnetic head and then read by three separated heads. What was read from the tape was amplified by the internal all-valve circuit and eventually recorded back to the tape, creating the feedback or "sustaining" echo effect. The delay time of the unit was determined by distance of the write head from the read heads, in conjunction with the speed of the tape. Many manufacturers of this era produced their versions of echo machines, mostly based on the magnetic tape system. The famous Binson Echorec was based on a circular drum head with a metallic magnetic stripe. It was used by Pink Floyd at the time of their album "Echoes". Another famous tape echo machine was the Maestro Echoplex, heavily used by pianist Herbie Hancock. Other notable units were the Selmer TruVoice Echo, the Dynacord Echocord, along one of the most famous and widely used from 1973 to present day: the Roland RE-201. This particular model has a tape loop about 4 meters long which is recorded, read and erased continuously. It consists of one erase head, one write head and three pick-up heads, which when combined with the variable speed DC capstan motor allows many different delay configurations. This machine also offers a reverberation effect based on a spring reverb tank. The combination of echo and reverb gives an "ethereal" ambience effect which eventually inspired the engineers so to name it "Space Echo".
Nowadays these machines are very sought after but quite rare to find on the market, and their evaluation increases year after year. There are many aspects that make the tape echo stand out from a modern digital delay. Here are a few of the main features:
1) the unpredictability. A capstan motor is never perfect like a digital clock signal, resulting in slight variations of the delay times and pitched sound.
2) the frequency response and dynamic range. A magnetic tape is not as clean and flat as a digital recording. Especially a loop of tape which is cyclically erased and re-recorded many times in a short time lapse.
3) noise, hum, distortion. Defects that a digital system shouldn't have, sometimes are wanted and can become "musically acceptable".
There is one way only to obtain all of this. To get the real thing.
Actually there's a much affordable and easy alternative: to use an accurate digital simulation.
GS-201 is an accurate simulation of a japanese Tape Echo machine of the early seventies, featuring:
* Distinctive dynamic range and frequency response
* Realistic response to the panel controls
* Motor "wow and flutter"
* Sound degradation and distortion at high feedback levels
* Very natural hum and background tape noise
* Three different kinds of magnetic tape models
* Ultra-low CPU usage
* Easy "MIDI Learn" feature
Reverb Type4 1.0.1
A spring reverb is a system to obtain artificial reverberation invented during the 40's by Laurens Hammond (also inventor of the Hammond Organ). In a Spring Reverb pan, the audio signal is coupled to one end of the spring by a transducer (a device that can convert electrical energy into mechanical energy or viceversa). This creates waves that propagate through the spring in both directions. At the other end of the spring there is another transducer that converts the motion in the spring into an electrical signal, which is then amplified and added to the dry sound. Most spring reverb units use several springs together, with each spring having its own characteristics (length, dimensions, tension, etc.) resulting in a natural reverberation by summing several delayed sounds at fixed or random intervals. However, with real spring reverbs the user isn't allowed to change these characteristics. A software simulation like Type4, on the other hand, allows you to adjust parameters like "decay" (reverb duration), the dampening factor, the virtual spring tension and other parameters that affect the overall timbre of the reverb effect. Why should you want to use a spring reverb rather than a precise and modern digital reverb? Spring reverbs have typical sonic characteristics that, nowadays, make them desirable mostly as effects on their own rather than simulations of an acoustic phenomena.
Plugin Description
Type4 is a simulation of a vintage "Type4" spring reverb unit.
Main features:
- Four virtual springs with variable tension
- Variable decay length
- Variable dampening factor
- Adjustable pre and post filtering
- Adjustable timbre
- Very low memory and CPU power needed
- Easy MIDI-Learn feature