Re: Innovative Gear That Got Discontinued - Vortex

[andy butler <akbutler@tiscali.co.uk>]

Rick Walker wrote:
> 
>> Andy's Vortex site:
>> >>  "The Vortex was the first of those four units to be discontinued ,
>> >>  essentially because no-one understood what it did."  What a shame!
> 
> This comment got me to thinking about all the innovative musical gear 
> projects
> that got discontinued much to the detriment of future creativity and 
> innovation.

Thing about the Vortex was that I don't think it's "special powers"
were appreciated by the designers, especially not at the executive level.

The supplied factory presets are mostly boring.

The ability to Morph from one algorithm to a completely
different one is what really sets the Vortex apart,
and I reckon that was only intended to create a smooth
transition from one sound to the next.

The Morphing *could* be emulated of course, really
it's just one big algorithm...but it's the easy
way a user can select a pair of presets for a 
Morph that provokes the killer sounds.

Just picking 2 favourite sounds and morphing between
them can often produces a great range of in between sounds,
often with unexpected weirdness.
(carefully swept with an expression pedal).

The patches which I programmed for a specific purpose
have usually been re-usable for alternate fx just
by using in a different way, very instrument like. 


andy