Legendary Effects Machines:
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 / / (_) | (_) | | | | | | | |/ __/| |_| | | | | | | | | |_| | | |_| | |  _|>  <
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   |o                          1201            ____ ____ ____ __     __  o|
   | __ __ __      __ ___   __   __               - -  - -  - - -   - -   |
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   |o/_|__|__||  | _\  | |_||_|||__|           ---- ---- ---- -   -   -  o|
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A little article on one of the greatest 1990s multi FX processors:
THE 1201 ZOOM STUDIO digital Reverb & Multi FX.

These can be had supercheap second hand as they were produced en-mass and
were marketed as a budget homestudio effects processor. Almost forgotten in
the maelstrom of time, it stood its ground and has matured as a tool of
exceptional exotic wizardry.

Year: 1997
Type: 19" rack 18 bits Digital effects processor
No memory for storing patches whatsoever, but its simple to recall and edit
any effect manually with the knobs on the front.

First of all, the REVERB effects, with a list price of 50 pounds it was
pretty clear we weren't going to have fancy Eventide or Bricasti style verbs.
Its feebly attempts at realistic reverb evaporate when compared to an
Eventide SPACE or Strymon Big sky. This is grungy and almost, lo-fi crispy.

Yet these simple reverbs giva a refreshingly nostalgic induced tranquility
to your sound, especially these days in which the reverb market is dominated by
extremely high quality super reverbs which sound so strangely real-life it
becomes a bit too disturbingly realistic  (Like an uncanny valley of
REVERB-effects!!!)

I suspect the brain likes to listen to lo-fi reverb because something in the
brain makes up for the "missing sound information" in whatever you like.
And ofcourse the brain likes to use its imagination, that makes you feel happy.

The reverb types are all over the place, from endless Hall, Room, Plate ones
to more obscure spaces such as MILLENIUM dimensions and the obligatory
gate and reverse ones for your 80s drum vibes.

NExt up is BANK B which contains the boring stuff like a mundane digital
delay, chorus, flanger and combinations of these with a bunch of reverbs.

The real fun starts in the C-bank:

PITCH - good for pitching vocals - Evil demonic voices to Smurf style
use with moderation to simulate female vocals. Also cool to make intervals
on synths when you take 300 or 500 pitchshift% and mix the dry/wet-mix 50%.

PHASER - An OK creamy sometimes thick Phase effect.

TRM-PAN - for some spacey stereo field effects

PITCH DELAY - This is a really cool effect where the delayed signal is pitch
shifted up or down, on a synthesizer you can get psychedelic arpeggio-interval-
like effects when you use the right interval pitch.

AUTO FILTER - A bunch of cool envelope follower/wahwah like effects. Good for
funk sounds.

RING MOD - One of the ZOOM 1201's famous FX - a really nice SCI-FI Ring
Modulator, like having an EMS Synthi or something. Instant DALEK Overlord fun!

LO-FI Effect - Also a classic 1201 flagship effect....YOu want NOISE!?!?!
You got it! 11 different Lo-fi effects with huge noise floors! You can just
turn these on by themselves and chill or fall asleep with them. We got
stuff like Telephone, AM Radio, vinyl records, electrical dust etc.
The best one is called BEACH TAPE: (name coolness factor 1000%) This is a
tape noise effect that sounds like a seashore. Swoooooooooooooooooooshhhhhhh.

VOCAL DISTORTION - all sorts of horrible 90s style Industrial vocal effects.

VOCODER -  a fully working vocoder ranging in sound from nice silken dreamy
angelic pad-like vocalizations to harsch evil robotic electro sounds.
It works quite easy, on the left input you feed your carrier
signal (a synthesizer) and on the right input you insert your microphone for the
speech. The vocoder sound is highly affected by the sound you put in as the
carrier signal making it a bit more exotic then the usual vanila saw/square wave
vocoder affairs. For a good intelligable vocoder sound its best to put a compressor
and EQ between the microphone and the ZOOM.

KARAOKE - Last and least its a Karaoke effect, supposedely it deletes vocals
from music so you can sing over it yourself. In theory, if you can get it to
work, you can make some instrumentals from vocal disco records for edits or
whatever...but I really can't be arsed with this effect.

Thanks to Brian Orgue for supplying me with the original 1201 Preset sheet.