Revv Amplification Shawn Tubbs signature Tilt Overdrive Demo | PG Gear Spotlight
Shawn Tubbs Signature Tilt Overdrive Demo
The Shawn Tubbs Tilt Overdrive is the tonal culmination of a lifetime in music. Shawn not only needed a practical tone tool to give him the right sound quickly in any musical context – he aimed to combine the greatest vintage amp tones & recorded guitar sounds of all time into one ideal sound. Now that tone is available to you in a compact 9v double pedal with a unique Tilt Boost.
The sound in Shawn’s head is a cranked single-channel vintage amp – but not any single amp. His ideal tone takes the best part of each great example & tweaks it to suit his personal guitar style. For Shawn a guitar tone has to have the right mids to cut through the mix & feel great to play – all while cleaning up great with your hands & your guitar’s volume knob. The Drive Circuit of the Shawn Tubbs Tilt Overdrive takes you anywhere from edge of breakup to an all-out solo tone with a musical distortion that always inspires. Note clarity, organic feel, & record-ready cut are the hallmarks of this unique drive you have to play for yourself.
To make the pedal as versatile as possible Shawn needed a great boost – but he had encountered something trying different boosts. Totally clean boosts… aren’t. When adding level there’s a low end buildup that makes your tone bloated. The opposite of what you want! That’s where the Tilt Boost comes in. Strategic frequency choices to taper low end & an internal 18v mod for high headroom let you achieve anything from precision tone sculpting to an authentically transparent boost. Use it to get more of the killer tone you already love or add sparkle to a rig that needs a little help. Solos with the Tilt Boost really cut, but you could also use it always-on for more clarity & a punchy feel. It’s even inspired Shawn to approach how he sets his amps in new ways integrating the Tilt Boost. There’s just one problem: once you hear it, you’re not going to want to turn it off!
Revv Amplification
$269
Reverse Multitracking | Recording Dojo FINAL
We are all familiar with the sound of reverse delay. On the surface, you might be thinking, “I can do this already.” But you’d be missing out. The “harmonic clouds” technique offers many more possibilities and much more control than recording a guitar part with a reverse delay effect. In short, this technique is inspired more by the process and sounds of double tracking than using delays.
This initial track is the closest thing to a simple reverse delay but it’s not—because it is an entirely different performance, and all those subtle timing and timbral differences are there in all their glory.
By the mid-’60s, it was standard practice for the Beatles to sing all their lead vocals (and some background vocals) twice to thicken up their voices. The resulting deviations from each individual track heard together offered a slight, natural, chorusing effect as well as charming variations in timing of words, dynamics, and timbre. The net result was that the vocals stood out more on the final recordings.
However, it was time consuming. John Lennon, in particular, was always asking for a way to have the sound of “double tracking” without actually having to track the vocal twice. EMI’s brilliant studio engineer Ken Townsend devised an ingenious way of splitting the signal from just after the recording head on a Studer J37 tape machine (at 15 ips) and routing it through both recording and playback heads of the EMI BTR2 tape machine (at 30 ips), the sound from the BTR2 would then be heard at almost the same time as the sound from the Studer’s playback head [Fig. 1] With a little more help from a Levell oscillator, Townsend could varispeed the BTR2 machine with greater control (see my March 2022 article about varispeed). Thus, ADT (artificial double tracking) was born, and, FYI, Waves makes the Reel ADT plug-in ($29 street) as part of their Abbey Road Collection. But I’m going to take you a bit further than that, because we’re going to create new tracks that will increasingly differ from the original! Plus, you can always apply ADT to the new tracks later.
Fig. 1
Let’s get started. Here are the three basic steps:
- Take the chords from a particular section of your song (perhaps the chorus or the bridge) and learn the progression backwards, including the rhythms as well. For this example, I was working on the bridge section of a song I wrote on my album that will be released this fall called Jacob’s Well. The way I do this is by writing a chart, then reversing the order and playing it until it feels natural.
- Create a new track and then record the “new” rhythm guitar part you just learned by muting all the other tracks and playing along with the click track.
- Reverse the track you just recorded and listen to it. Before you unmute all the other tracks and listen to how it sounds, you may have to align it a bit depending on when you stopped recording. Feel free to experiment and play around with aligning the new track in different places rhythmically and listen to how it changes the section. This initial track is the closest thing to a simple reverse delay but it’s not—because it is an entirely different performance, and all those subtle timing and timbral differences are there in all their glory.
Now we’re ready to have some real fun. Create some new tracks and repeat steps one though three, but each time play the same reversed passage in different parts of the guitar (i.e., you can change the tuning, use a capo, use only power chords, add effects, etc). As the versions pile in and you get used to the process, I think you’ll be really surprised by the results. Who knows, you might even start trying this with all kinds of instruments! Just remember to always serve the song and stay true to the emotional content you want to use these tracks to achieve. Most often for me, less is more.
Until next month, blessings, and keep sharing your gifts with the world. Namaste.
Submit your own artist pick collections to rebecca@premierguitar.com for inclusion in a future gallery.