It does not I'm told.

What about feeding it back to itself thru the console?

I have no idea what this trick is or what it sounds like, but I have copped a bunch of good stuff from Thrill in the past.

Who is Andy Wallace? Related to George Wallace?

Good point. And to the poster who reminded us of the fact we are "engineers". 'Thank you'.

A great punchy rock mix engineer IMO. He mixed hits for Artists such as:

http://allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg...eftjq7b~1~T40D

Tried it and found there's two ways to do this: either with the output mix CTRL set to INPUT or with the CTR set to DELAY: seems like you can keep dialing it in when set to INPUT, while the sound breaks up a lot faster on the DELAY setting. What do you folks prefer?

I have tried the pcm42 trick and was midley impressed... worth 1500 bucks no way.

I simply send a compressed signal into my sans amp and go nuts. The sans amps signal can add some nice extra crackle and a tinny bit balls to the orgiginal signal. Delaying the signal can have good results..... but it all depends on the mix.

for the record, i did not write the tip below. it was originally penned by thrill, and slipperman responded but misattributed the quote to me.

while i'm honored to be in such great company, i cannot take credit for ideas that are not mine. at least, not when i'm so likely to get caught .


gregoire
del
ubk
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Originally Posted by U B I K
Actually a lot of the grain comes from the built in overload compressor in the PCM42.

The harder you drive it the more it bites down.

That's one way to get those biting AW electric guitar sounds.

If you put in on insert on one side of an electric guitar pair with almost no delay and you turn up the input but turn down the output you get this ridiculous big in your face guitar sound.

Same goes on a lead vocal.
.

Just an FYI, I have one of these on Ebay right now:

LEXICON 1300S DIGITAL DELAY WITH LIMITER - (eBay item 170181415095 end time Jan-01-08 18:02:58 PST)

I've always preferred the PCM-41 - go figure. Used to run it in the fx loop of my wonderful Randall RG-120 solid state head.thumbsup

(Yes, I've a/b-ed the 41 & 42)

All these tricks start off as someone patching in a box into the TT BAY or whatever and the knobs are not set or they are still set up from the last session and BOOM!!!....the unit is overloading and..."FK"!!!......"THAT SOUNDS PRETTY COOL"!!!...and then after everyone copies it,it becomes an industry standard trick that everyone uses until they start teaching it at Full sail.

...or until they realize that it's actually not really THAT cool to begin with

It actually is a cool trick. It isn't like "wow, that's what a guitar/voice/drum sounds like through a Fairchild?!!!". It's more like you listen to it with it and then without it, and you go, "put it back on, it sounded better with it." And I'm sure that heavy-hitter mixers who work in rooms full of PCM42s don't think twice about using them this way.

I literally don't have room for it in my rack. It's space (and whatever it sells for) is going towards a 3124+.

I started doing it for a while and got over it fairly quickly.

Same. I use my lexicon delays for other, more important (to me), tasks. If I need to do the pseudo stereo thing I'll just use the protools delay.

I haven't seen a PCM42 for years, let alone tried this trick. (I've got the PSP Plugin, but somehow doubt it has anything like what's being described here).

So let me get this straight: you insert the PCM42 into the guitar effect loop? I.E - in series between preamp and power amp? No effects - you are just using the a/d in and the d/a out, and I presume there is some sort of analog limiting or companding going on? Or is it just a bit of gain and distortion from abusing the gain structure?

Why not insert a limiter?

I know the Edge was famous for using a Korg delay in front of his Vox amp for a similar effect (and the delays, of course). Somebody was selling a box that emulated the front end of the Korg, to get just that effect.

Maybe there is something to be said for inserting a/d and d/a into a guitar chain ... certainly makes me feel better about my reamping methods...

It's an optical limiter on the input of a PCM42. The 'verbs (pcm60, etc) don't have limiters - normally they just clip. PCM70, in theory, should be able to to compression given that it has VCA's in it. I don't know if the software does it, as I don't have one. Most of the later ones do the dry-wet mix in digital so they'll just clip.

Does anybody know if the Lexicon 92 has the same or similar kind of limiter as the PCM 42?

Probably build his own ... would be my guess.

Exactly my point. Roll yer own "coolness"

Are you sure? Hmmmmmm that doesn't sound right. I seem to recall the limiter as being digital.

I'm not positive, but I don't think it does.

PCM42 limiter is optical. U15 + U14 make up the dry signal limiter. Note that U14 is a CdS photocell + LED. U9 + U16 make up the A-D converter (dry + feedback) limiter. Bargraph drive voltage is used to run this limiter. U16 is another CdS + LED cell. It's listed as a CLM50 on the schematic.

I do not see a limiter on any of the PCM60/70/80/90 series.

I do not have a schematic of a PCM41.

-Dale

I have some opinions and theories on this "trick" having used it over the years on both a 41 and a 42. They are herewith served with the requisite grain of salt...

I believe this was maybe discovered when someone (as noted above) had a mix going, took a break, powered down, and came in the next day and went "Wow" - those guitars sound awesome!" only to discover that the delay which was being being used for stereo chorus effect was now set to 00 ms. Despite some opinions that it can not be done on a 41, I believe that it may have actually been discovered on a PCM 41, because the 41 came first and it does not remember the delay setting when powered down. As noted by others here, if it was just the limiter on the 42, then you could achieve this effect by just slamming any limiter and blending it.

And besides, it was taught to me years ago by another engineer, on a 41, (pre Nirvana even!)

Here is what I was taught:

If you set the PCM 41 delay time to 00 ms and 100% wet and pan opposite the mono source track and balance the two, you can create a very lush/thick stereo guitar sound that also also holds up rather well in mono and is not too 80's chorusy. Apparently, if you have a 42, you can also crank the input to get the increased limiting from that device too. But what seems to be left out above is that the delay mix control must be set to 100% delay.

In my experience, you can even blend the dry/effect channels into mono (or in-between instead of hard panned) for spatial effects and to "widen" the guitar footprint but still place it somewhere other than total pseudo-stereo. Bringing up the delay time ever so slightly can vary the effect but too much and you are just heading into flange/chorus territory.

In the interest of full disclosure, I have done the above effect on PCM 41's and 42's over the years without the limiting since I only just learned about that here on gearslutz. And I don't have access to a 42 anymore and I don't recall intentionally slamming the 42's when I did this in the past.

So why might this effect work on these delays and not others?

I may be wrong but it's my theory that it is not just the limiter on the 42 that adds to the guitar sound, but the fact that you are setting the delay to near 00 ms and running a signal through the less than perfect sample/delay circuit of a 42 (or a 41) which alters the wave form (re-sampling) even when set to 00 ms. This thickens the original sound in a way that simply eq or compression alone cannot achieve. It is kind of grungy on its own, and kind of cool when mixed with the source track. ITB effects like echo farm or the PSP emulations can not do this in the same way. Other delays that I have tried it on, like the effectrons and SDE's don't seem to do it either. Something happens to a PCM 41/42 when set to 00 ms and then using a bit of the delay factor knob.

While the 41 is different than the 42 effect (no limiter) it is to me equally valuable, if it's a sound you're after. If you have a 41 lying around, try it, and you may want to keep your 41 (too)!

All this being said, it is just a trick, it can get old fast, and I don't do it much anymore since I mix primarily ITB, but I do occasionally miss it on a track that really needs some help.

Great post.

Did you really think that the plug-in would do the same thing?

I used to have a pair of Lexicon PCM42s until '92 when I sold that studio.
I liked them a lot.... they are one of the standard pieces.
They are way better then a PCM41.

They do have one HIGHLY annoying quality though.

The first delay is ALWAYS longer than the following delays.
The longer the delay time, the longer the first delay compared to the following delays.
For shorter delays it osn't that bad, but if yo want something long it can be quite irritating and not to mention frustrating!

I have never seen a PCM42 that didn't have this going on.

Check out SoundToys EchoFarm, there you can do that type of limiting, and there are a whole bunch of limiting/ distortion / crushing presets. Not bad for a delay plugin.

I never thought a plug-in would do the same, but when PSP came out with the PSP42 I had to check it out - and was promptly dissappointed. I think many have hoped it would work, but I have yet to find an ITB solution that does it the same. I do agree that the soundtoys stuff is probably the easiest to get close (echoboy being the most fun and one of my fave delay plugs anyway.)

I have come close by down-sampling the original signal to 16 or 12 bit and delaying it by a few ms, kind of like what a PCM does anyway. Still not quite the same.

The PSP isn't bad but can anyone that has a real 42 confirm that the PSP envelope modulation with long delay settings goes the opposite of what a real 42 does? As the input signal drops the pitch modulates up?

My 41 modulates down (like an SDD3000) and I'd swear the 42 was the same but I haven't mucked with one in while.

Guys, we in Spain don't speak english too much, so I don't understand 100% this, do you mind to explain me this again?:

You insert a PCM42 on a guitar track, then you turn it up the input in order to crush it's built in limiter then you set the delay time to 0ms,
then do you blend that to the original signal or pan that far left or the opposite side?
I'm interested, because right now there are a couple of PCM42 in ebay that may worth to buy. (euro-dollar)

OOP.

Correct. That is what I was taught but to be honest it there may be some variations.

100% delay (wet) panned opposite the dry signal, with 0 - 1 ms delay. You can experiment with blending the two signals more to mono or one side or the other.

Either way, if you can get a PCM42 cheap because the American $ is crashing, they are very useful anyway for much more than this effect.

Thanks Embrionic, but what if there is already a "double tracked" guitar, maybe in that case the "PCM42 trick" works in order to make each track bigger...

I'm sure that Nirvana Smells Like Teen Spirit have doubled guitars, panned hard left and right, Did AW used his PCM42 trick there?


OOP