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Looper's Delight
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John writes: >So, tell us, Jon, if you can: Is there really some exotic and expensive >DSP deep mojo in the Vortex, to justify the list price? Or did the >Lexfolk simply misguess the desirability of morphing along with the >need to explain Bleen? How much time've you gotz? OK, DSP-wise there's a cute little chip the likes of which had never shown it's face 'round the Lex parts. Generally, since the advent of the Lexichip (the DSP engine which powers all Lex processors from '88-forward) the engineering staff snickered at the concept of using some "generic" dsp chip. Eventually, some smart person put his hands on a new (at the time) 2105 chip (manufacturer escapes me temporarily, sorry) and began experimenting. He discovered some serious mind-altering delay modulation stuff which simply couldn't be done within a Lexichip. (Now, understand, we're looking at the other half of the PCM -42 equation here, JamMan being the straight delay part, but you couldn't wobulate it. So...) Now, everyone agreed that a modulating delay would be cool. Then somebody stumbled into the morphing thing, and a whole new set of doors opened up. What we started to hear were a whole new category of effects. Think about how long it's been since somebody had a "new" effect. Remember the first wah, phasor, flanger, chorus? Well, now we had the first Bleen. Well, OK another example might be better, but maybe not. We kept looking for unusual ways to go about things. The reasoning behind the names was that, even though "Choir" is a chorus and "orbits" is a leslie, they work really differently from their normal effectoid counterparts. The envelope control was a big part of that, as well as pedal control. And the more outside stuff (Bleen, Fractal) gave us a chance to really get something shocking into the box to compliment the more "useable" effects. Morphing: OK, it was "an idea who's time had come", but I will say this. Morphing is the primary reason I use the box. I use it all the time, to either swell in delays, fast pedal detunes, slow ring-mod to flangin/panning/looping--fractal, or sometimes leave the pedal somewhere in the middle for horribly nasty beauty. (This is how Torn uses Vortex--the goo in the middle.) As you can see, this box has so much it's hard to imagine people not getting it. And I distinctly remember the first time we trotted it out to the LA/NY sales guys. We had to clean their seats after our demo. "This is the home run box!" "This one's gonna break us in MI". Well, kids, what happened? BTW: The GC blow-out deal makes Lexicon $0 per unit. GC bought them at Lex's cost to remove them from inventory. GC makes about $20/unit. Good profit, huh? By 'em while you can, gang, 'cuz you'll never see anything like it again. From anyone. (I can still hear the dirisive laughter from my friends at Digidreck.) Then, 20 years from now, you'll be able to sell it for $1200 as a classic, vintage, whatever...