The PG Dawner Prince Pulse review.
Deep, thick, luxurious rotary simulations—particularly in stereo. Super intuitive and easy to use.
Side mounted output gain pots are useful but awkward to access.
$339
Dawner Prince Pulse
dawnerprince.com
When you think about David Gilmour's guitar sounds, you tend to think of big Hiwatts, creamy Big Muff or blazing Fuzz Face tones, and Echorec delays bouncing infinitely off the columns of Roman amphitheaters.
But modulation has always been an equally foundational part of Gilmour's outsized sound picture. And while he's probably most famously associated with the Electro-Harmonix Electric Mistress when it comes to signal wobbling, he has embraced rotary speakers regularly since 1969. For much of his career, Gilmour used Leslie 147s or Yamaha RA-200s in this role. But at some point, he started to work with the Maestro Rover—an unusual stand-mounted rotating speaker that his technicians would use as inspiration for his more powerful, custom Doppola units. By the mid '90s—a period that looms large for Gilmour tone hounds of a certain breed—the Maestro and Doppolas were elemental parts of his sound.
Recorded with Squier HH Jaguar, Fender black panel Tremoloux head through Universal Audio OX using Fender Tweed 12" cabinet emulation.
First segment moves from slowest rate to fastest, uses closest possible mic' proximity setting, and wet/dry mix at noon.
:43 - Moves from slow speed at 10 0'clock to fast rate at 2 o'clock, uses furthest mic proximity setting, mix at maximum
1:27 - Moves from slow speed at 10 0'clock to fast rate at 2 o'clock, uses closest mic proximity setting, mix at maximum
If the name wasn't hint enough, Dawner Prince's Pulse pays homage to this sound in a loving and well-executed way. But even if you aren't out to replicate Gilmour modulation textures from The Division Bell and Pulse, this Croatian company's exceptional rotary simulator is a fine way to introduce the immersive, extra-liquid textures of a rotary speaker to your signal chain without hauling a cumbersome antique and its own team of mechanical medics.
Surprising Simplicity
With five staggered knobs, two footswitches, stereo outs and an expression input, the Pulse looks more complex than it is. In reality, it's very intuitive to use. And even superficially esoteric controls like the distance knob (which shifts the proximity of the virtual "mic" picking up the rotary speaker signal) and the inertia knob (which regulates the rate of the virtual speaker's acceleration or deceleration) have a very organic, natural feel and are simple to add and modify to taste. The more straightforward controls are satisfying to use, too. The slow and fast speed controls have great range (the modulation rate spans .4 to 8 virtual speaker rotations per second). You can toggle between fast and slow rates using the fast-slow footswitch and you don't have to worry about "progamming" a fast or slow preset—the switch simply ramps up or down (at a rate prescribed by the inertia control) between whatever speeds you've set on the respective knobs.
Dawner Prince also accounted for the possibility of perceived volume loss at some of the most intense modulation levels by mounting small gain pots adjacent to each output jack. You need a small flathead screwdriver to adjust them. Obviously, top-mounted knobs would be user friendly, but I was generally pleased with the output level at maximum modulation intensity. And on the whole, I'd venture that Dawner Prince made a smart compromise between cluttering the main control panel and concealing these pots inside the enclosure.
Worlds of Whirl
If you had to briefly characterize what sets the Pulse apart from lesser rotary simulators, it would be the deep and real sense of motion that pedal communicates. This quality is especially apparent if you take time to set it up for stereo output, which I did through two amplifiers as well as a DAW.
The Pulse's output very effectively replicates the complex interactions between fundamentals and overtones that occur when moving air and speakers are added to a tone equation.
These highly kinetic qualities don't just come from bouncy stereo pictures, however. Even in mono, the Pulse's output very effectively replicates the complex interactions between fundamentals and overtones that occur when moving air and speakers are added to a tone equation. At the right settings, you can almost see and feel the rise, dissipation, and passing of sound as bodies and particles (entirely without pharmaceutical assistance, I might add). It's a very visceral way to experience a guitar sound, and it comes pretty close to the thrill of parking your head right by a rotary speaker in motion.
The harmonic complexities and kinetic sensations generated by the Pulse are best enjoyed, at least to my ear, at slower settings where it's easier to perceive the bloom of these sounds. And even though the Pulse's fast modulation settings generate very rich, throbbing pulses, I preferred to keep my fastest modulation sounds on the slower side so I could bask in the dimensionality of the sound picture.
The Pulse also excels at walking the fine line between the practical and the ridiculous. Even the most modulation-heavy mix settings are never overbearing. And while you can generate relatively extreme metallic high-mid peaks in the modulation by bringing the virtual mic proximity in close and cranking the mix, these sounds still have a full-spectrum richness and help the Pulse achieve some of the funkier sounds you hear from Leslies and Fender Vibratones.
The very-well-made Pulse is also super quiet, by the way. I wouldn't hesitate to try it on other instruments or vocals in a mix situation.
The Verdict
If you're chasing realistic rotary speaker tones in a stompbox, the Pulse will likely pay back the extra money you'll spend. The sense of real mechanical motion and dimensionality is perceptibly stronger than a lot of digital rotary simulations I've played. And while the Doppola/Rover-based tone emphasis does give the Pulse a unique voice, it rivals the best high-end Leslie emulators I've encountered in terms of realism and atmosphere.
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Fender’s American Vintage II Series
For these new recreations, Fender focuses on the little things that make original golden-era Fenders objects of obsession.
If there’s one thing players love more than new guitars, it’s old guitars—the unique feel, the design idiosyncrasies, the quirks in finish that all came from the pre-CNC era of instrument manufacturing. These characteristics become the stuff of legend, passed on through the years via rumors and anecdotes in shops, forums, and community networks.
It’s a little difficult to separate fact from fiction given these guitars aren’t easy to get your hands on. Fender Telecasters manufactured in the 1950s and 1960s sell for upwards of $20,000. But old is about to become new again. Fender’s American Vintage II series features 12 year-specific electric guitar and bass models from over two decades, spanning 1951 to 1977, that replicate most specs on their original counterparts, but are produced with modern technologies that ensure uniform build and feel.
Chronologically, the series begins and ends, fittingly, with the Telecaster—starting with the butterscotch blonde, blackguard 1951 Telecaster (built with an ash body, one-piece U-shaped maple neck, and 7.25" radius fretboard) and ending with the 1977 Telecaster Custom, which features a C-shaped neck, a CuNiFe magnet-based Wide Range humbucker in the neck position, and a single-coil at the bridge. The rest of the series spans the highlights of Fender’s repertoire: the 1954 Precision Bass, 1957 Stratocaster in ash or alder, 1960 Precision Bass, 1961 Stratocaster, 1963 Telecaster, 1966 Jazz Bass, 1966 Jazzmaster, 1972 Tele Thinline, 1973 Strat, and 1975 Telecaster Deluxe. The 1951 Telecaster, 1957 Strat, 1961 Strat, and 1966 Jazz Bass will also be offered as left-handed models. Street prices run from $2,099 to $2,399.
Fender '72 American Vintage II Telecaster Thinline Demo | First Look
Spec’d To Please
Every guitar in the series sports the era’s 7.25" radius fretboard, a mostly abandoned spec found on Custom Shop instruments—Mexico-made Vintera models, and Fender’s Artist Series guitars like the Jimmy Page, Jason Isbell, and Albert Hammond Jr. models. Most modern Fenders feature a 9.5" radius, while radii on Gibsons reach upwards of 12". Videos experimenting with the 7.25" radius’ playability pull in tens of thousands of viewers, suggesting both a modern fascination with and a lack of exposure to the radius among some younger and less experienced players.
T.J. Osborne of the Brothers Osborne picks an American Vintage II 1966 Jazzmaster in Dakota red.
Bringing back the polarizing 7.25" radius across the entire series is a gamble, and it’s been nearly five years since Fender released year-specific models. But Fender executive vice president Justin Norvell says that two years ago when the Fender brain trust was conceptualizing the American Vintage II line, they decided the time was right to “go back to the well.”
“We’ve been doing the same [models], the same years, over and over again for 30 years,” says Norvell. “We really wanted to change the line and expand it into some new things that we hadn’t done before and pick some different years that we thought were cool.”
“It takes a lot of doing to go back in time and sort of uncover the secret-sauce recipes.”—Steve Thomas, Fender
To decide on which years to produce, Fender drew from what Norvell calls a “huge cauldron of information” from Custom Shop master builders to collectors with vintage models to former employees from the 1950s and 1960s. The hands-on manufacturing of Fender’s golden years meant guitars produced within the same year would have marked differences in design and finish. So, the team had to procure multiple versions of the same year’s guitar to decide which models to replicate. Norvell says some purists would advocate for the “cleanest, most down-the-middle kind of variant,” while others would push for more esoteric and rare versions. Norvell says that ultimately, the team picked the models that they felt best represented “the throughline of history on our platforms.”
Simple and agile, the Fender Precision Bass—here in its new American Vintage II ’54 incarnation—earned its reputation in the hands of Bill Black, James Jamerson, Donald “Duck” Dunn, and other foundational players.
Norvell says the American Vintage II series was developed, in part, in response to calls to reproduce vintage guitars. Just like with classic cars, he says, people are passionate about year-specific guitars. Plus, American Vintage II fits perfectly with the pandemic-stoked yearning for bygone times. “For some people, these specific years are representative of experiences they had when they were first playing guitar, or a favorite artist that played guitars from these eras,” says Norvell. “These are touchstones for those stories, and that makes them very desirable.”
Cracking Codes
Fender’s electric guitar research and design team, led by director Steve Thomas, dug through the company’s archive of original drawings and designs—dating all the way back to Leo Fender’s original shop in Fullerton, California. They found detailed notes, including some documenting body woods that changed mid-year on certain models. Halfway through 1956, for example, Stratocaster bodies switched from ash to alder. That meant the American Vintage II 1957 Stratocaster needed to be alder, too. That, in turn, meant ensuring enough alder was on hand to fulfill production needs.
Among the series’ Stratocaster recreations is this 1973-style instrument, with an ash body, maple C-profile neck, rosewood fretboard, and the company’s Pure Vintage single-coils.
Thomas and his team discovered another piece of the production puzzle when researching how pickups for that same 1957 Strat were made. “We realized that if we incorporated a little bit more pinch control on the winders, we could more effectively mimic the way pickups would have been hand-wound in the ’50s,” says Thomas. “It takes a lot of doing to go back in time and sort of uncover the secret-sauce recipes.”
Thomas proudly calls the guitars “some of the best instruments we’ve ever made here in the Fender plant,” pointing to the level of detail put into design features, including more delicate lacquer finishes which take longer to cure and dry, and vintage-correct tweed cases for some guitars. New pickups were incorporated in the series, like a reworking of Seth Lover’s famed CuNiFe Wide Range humbuckers, which were discontinued around 1981. Even more minute details, like the width of 12th fret dots and the material used for them, were labored over. Three different models in the line feature clay dot inlays at unique, year-specific spacings.
Ironically, modern CNC manufacturing now makes these design quirks consistent features in mass-produced instruments. While the hand-crafted guitars from the ’50s and ’60s varied a lot from instrument to instrument. “Everything needs to be located perfectly, and it wasn’t necessarily back in the day,” says Norvell. “Now, it can be.”
Don’t Look Back
With this new series so firmly planted in the rose-tinted past, Fender does run the risk of netting only vintage-obsessed players. But Norvell says the team, despite being sticklers for period-correct detail, sought to strike a balance between vintage specs, practicality, and playability. The 1957 Stratocaster, for example, has a 5-way switch rather than the original’s 3-way switch. Norvell also asserts that the “ergonomic” old-school radius feels great when chording. “It might not be [right for] a shred machine, but it feels great and effortless.”
The 1966 Jazz Bass is also represented, shown here in a left-handed version.
Norvell also pushes back on the notion that Fender is playing it safe by indulging nostalgia and leaning on their past successes. He says that while the vintage models are some of the most desirable on the market, the team “purposely did not stick to the safe bets,” citing unusual year models like the 1954 P Bass and the 1973 Stratocaster.
There’s a good reason why anything that hails back to “the good ol’ days” hits home with every generation. We’re constantly plagued by a belief that what came before is better than what we’ve got now. But with the American Vintage II series, Fender makes the case that guitars from the ’50s, ’60s, and ’70s can very easily be a relevant part of the 2020s.The Red Sea was born out of the vision to provide complex signal routing options available to the live/performing musician, that up until now, are only found in a studio mixing environment.
Introducing the Red Sea, an all-analog signal routing matrix, designed for countless stereo and mono signal path routing options. The Red Sea was born out of the vision to provide complex signal routing options available to the live/performing musician, that up until now, are only found in a studio mixing environment. The Red Sea has accomplished this in a compact, easy-to-use, and cost-effective solution.
Wet | Dry | Wet
The Red Sea gives you the ability to run a FULL Stereo wet dry wet rig using only 2 amps or just 2 signals to the FOH, while also giving you complete control over your Wet & Dry mix! Use the Blend knob to control the overall mix between stereo wet effects and mono dry/drive signals.
Stereo Dual Amps
Run dual amp modelers if full stereo w/ stereo effects. Gone are the traditional ways of one amp in the Left channel and another in the Right channel. Now use the Red Sea to seamlessly blend between two separate amps in true stereo. Think of this as a 2-channel amp where you can blend anywhere between both amps.
Stereo Parallel FX
Red Sea has two independent stereo FX loops. Use each FX loop to run stereo delay's and reverb's in parallel, where each effect does not interact with each other. Huge soundscapes can be achieved with washy reverbs and articulate delay repeats while being able to blend between each FX loops mix level.
The Red Sea can also do the following routing options:
- Wet | Dry utilizing a single amp
- Clean Wet | Dry | Wet (drives DO NOT run into wet effects)
- Wet | Dry | Wet with dual delays (one in the L channel & other in R channel)
- Parallel Dual Amps (run dual amp modelers in FULL stereo)
- Convert a tube amp's serial FX Loop to a parallel FX Loop
- Stereo and Mono analog dry through (avoid latency in digital pedals)
Features:
Stardust V3 was designed to capture the sound and response of 3 distinct amplifier models.
Stardust V3 was designed to capture the sound and response of 3 distinct maxed-out amplifier models. An all-analog signal path with discrete gain stages featuring MOSFET transistors provides juicy overdrive tones with great note separation that clean up to that sparkly sound that we all love and heard in recordings of the past. Set gain and tone and control everything from your guitar. Sparkly clean to crunchy mean are all there.
You can select the amplifier voicing via the onboard toggle switch.
BSM: Voiced after a blackface amp head that was primarily targeted for bass guitar players but got famous for electric guitar classic rock tones.
VLX: Voiced after a chimey 2x10” combo offering the perfect amount of controllable crunch
DLX: Voiced after one of the most popular low wattage 1×12″ combo amps that have found their way in countless recording studios and clubs around the world.
Stardust V3 now comes with top-mounted jacks and soft-click true bypass via a high-quality relay. The pedal has loads of output volume and enhanced headroom provided by 18V DC (boosted internally) so that it can also be used as a preamp going straight into your Power Amp or AudioInterface when combined with a separate speaker simulation device.
Street price: 199 Euro / 199 USD.
For more information, please visit crazytubecircuits.com.
The Sunn O))) Life Pedal circuit has been meticulously tweaked from the original and includes a third footswitch.
Sunn O))) present an enhanced version of the Sunn O))) Life Pedal Octave Distortion + Booster, in collaboration with their comrades at EarthQuaker Devices. The Sunn O))) Life Pedal circuit has been meticulously tweaked from the original to squeeze every last drop of heavy crushing tone available. The octave section has been fine tuned to make it more pronounced without losing the bottom end and we added a third footswitch, utilizing Flexi-Switch Technology, for the octave to allow an additional method of quick and radical tone shaping.
“Working on this new version has been a great continuity of this collaboration which feels so right, and sounds so right,” says Stephen O’Malley. “It’s a really beautiful pedal and it’s also a beautiful art collaboration. I think we made something really interesting that people can enjoy to use for their own music, but also, it makes a lot of sense to release a piece of distortion as a release for our band. We’re really happy that this is a trilogy now.”
The Sunn O))) Life Pedal is designed to represent the core front end chain used in those sessions, to drive the tubes of the band’s multiple vintage Sunn O))) Model T amplifiers (or take your fancy) into overload ecstasy. This is a 100w tube amp full stack’s holy dream, or its apostate nightmare.
Tech Specs:
Sunn O))) Life Pedal is a distortion with a blendable analog octave up and a booster- Features 3 different clipping options: Symmetrical Silicon, Asymmetrical Silicon & LED, and pure OpAmp Drive
- Distortion and booster can be used independently
- Expression and footswitch control over analog octave up
- Octave blend allows total control over how much Octave is mixed into the circuit
- True bypass with silent relay based soft touch switches
- Features EarthQuaker Devices’ proprietary Flexi-Switch® Technology
- Lifetime warranty
- Current Draw: 15 mA
- Octave Distortion: Input impedance: 1 MΩ / Output impedance: <1 kΩ
- Booster: Input Impedance: 500 kΩ / Output Impedance: <1 kΩ
- List Price: $299 USD