Hi.
So I’ve been using Ghosts for almost a week straight running different experiments through it. It’s a mind blowing pedal and I’ve already developed a few tracks with it.
Drones through it sound amazing. Perkons and pulsar sound ridiculous. Solar 42 is aces. I’m using deluge for midi. My big Rhodes pedal setup is very cosmic with it. 8-step program to trigger chord changes via expression. Boom. Lovely.
Here are thoughts / questions:
can terrazzo speed be clocked synced? It could be particularly useful when it is post resonator. It borders on tremolo / arpeggios when you feed it a drone / freeze. Highly recommended use case. Am I missing something? Same goes for Shepard filter time.
a saturator / drive of some kind would be an incredible addition. Especially to the string model. Give it a touch of grit. Help it separate from the mix a little.
The biggest issue I’m coming across is taming the peaks and finding the sweet spot when I play an instrument through it. But MOSTLY when I hit the same note as the root. It sort of doubles down on the resonating. Guitar. Rhodes (especially rhodes). Bass. baritone guitar. Even certain wave shapes on my synths. All the same. The note played matching the root note set really makes the pedal go ape. The limiter helps, but some times it’s not fast enough. And anything north of noon sort of dulls the dynamic magic of everything around it. It also dips the drum machine when you start playing on top. Input filter kills my dry tone. The position kind of helps sometimes, but I dont really understand what’s going on with it. And voicing sort of helps but starts to drift into registers I dont want to be in if there is a vibe I’m after. I understand there is volume and mix and all that. But I find myself constantly adjusting 4-5 parameters to avoid this one very specific thing. I hate comparing… but I have prismatic wall and lost and found… with those I find myself wanting to resolve on the root that they are tuned to (with L and F it’s the secondary bypass function). It’s sonically rewarding. With ghosts I’m actively trying to avoid it. Which is making me use the pedal far more subtly than I’d like when using an instrument as the exciter. What am I doing wrong?
With drums and odd exciters and the midi exciters it doesn’t do the above nearly as much. If at all.
I love the three models. Is there an inherent bass loss with the tubes and bars? The kick from the drum machine slaps way harder in string mode. Just curious. It doesn’t bother me. It makes me approach things differently.
This one is hard to explain, but the sweet spot (to me) for the three models is so vastly different knob wise that changing on the fly is jarring. And playing around going back and forth is time consuming cause you have to adjust settings back to what was best for each one. Perhaps a save state for each model? I understand there are presets. But improvisation happens for me so much that fiddling with presets is somewhat of a flow killer.
I also wish the touch parameters would have a save state for each touch mode. Particularly the hidden ones. Again maybe I’m too lazy for presets. I just want to play!!! Haha.
I left my pedal board on for a few hours cause I had a loop saved in another pedal. When I came back ghosts wasn’t working. Bypass light came on but no was sound going through. This has happened twice. Unplugging the pedal was required. Is there a sleep function or something?
that’s it. Despite the above, Ghosts is one of my fav pedals this year. It has a secret allure to it that makes me want to keep learning and playing it. It’s nuts how much you packed in there. And how much of it I’m actually using… which is most. Good job Kinotoners.
I take back some of the above about the different sweet spots for different models. I broke new ground last night on middle of the road starting points for improvising. This pedal is ridiculous. I love it so much. And I didn’t realize how much I wrote above, I was just taking notes in my phone as I played… didn’t realize it was an essay. Apologies for being a verbose knob.
It’s okay. You’re not the first and you certainly won’t be the last.
Here are some answers to your questions:
Yes - all Touch Modes can be synced to MIDI clock (mentioned in the manual).
No plans to add saturation. Most people have plenty of dirt options. Maybe you’ve heard of these other devices we make called Sparks and Ribbons.
What you’re describing is textbook behavior of a classical resonator when it’s driven with harmonically rich, sustaining material at its natural frequency (the tuned root). It will reinforce and accumulate energy at that pitch more strongly than anything around it.
You can tame this using the input filter - you may just be engaging it too intensely. Used subtly it can roll off just enough low end to reduce how strongly the fundamental excites the resonators. As you noted, changing the Voicing can also push the resonators into the upper frequency range where the upper harmonics of your signal excite the resonators instead of the fundamental.
It’s been awhile since John from EAE and I have talked but if I recall correctly, he approached this in Prismatic Wall by boosting treble into the resonators and attenuating it at the output (classic pre / post emphasis). It’s is a solid strategy for guitar-centric use but comes with tradeoffs in other applications. Lost + Found works very differently under the hood and isn’t exactly a “true” resonator, so I’d hesitate to draw comparisons there.
Not necessarily, but the stretched partials tend to have a brighter sound.
No plans for this. Just use presets.
I would guess this is user error. We’ve left the pedal on for days before with no issue, so that’s not something I’ve observed. Were you sending it MIDI notes? If so, then it’s in “MIDI Takeover Mode” and you wake up the device by twisting the Root knob.
Yes the touch mode sync was my fault… my old midi thru box was fried.
I have had a Ribbons since 4/23 (pink)!! and Sparks on the way. I actually don’t have that many dirt pedals. Just a muff and an overdrive and a pll (is that dirt?) elsewhere in my chain. BUT, I found that setting the internal reverb before the exciter ads a crispier hazier character that I was looking for without dirtying it up too much.
I get it about acoustic resonance… its the same reason the AC vent in my studio vibrates when i hit a G#. I’m starting to figure taming the peaks all out (just getting faster at adjusting and predicting when it will happen).
No midi was connected when it turned off … pretty sure it wasn’t user error, but I’m not bothered. It hasn’t happened again.
I am digging deeper and deeper into the abyss of creativity that my Ghosts offers )
What an incredible pedal, and what a great manual - really helps understanding this masterpiece.
There’s one small question (I am sure, one of many more to come))), that I couldn’t find the answer for: is the Expression (or CV, but I am using expression) mapping savable per preset, or is it “global”?
Thank you, that’s what I thought, just wanted to confirm.
Af first, it seemed to me that, given the huge diversity of things and sounds this beast can do, I wanted my expression pedal to control different things in different scenarios, but since all of the parameters are CC-controllable, I could easily achieve it via Expression to MIDI setup.
Another small question: the manual says the CV In range is 0-5v. Just out of caution and curiosity: does it have any sort of overvoltage/negative voltage protection? Not that I intended to feed it with something exorbitant, but, for instance, one of my ideas is to try to pair Ghosts with Fairfield Cirquitry Conflict of Interest, which is an envelope to CV generator (outputs varying CV voltage based on your playing dynamics). The Conflict can output the CV voltage in a 0-7v range, of course, I can tame it down with the Level control, but overall, is it something I should worry about?
I wouldn’t worry about it - it has over/under voltage protection up to ~ +/-18V. So if you send it anything >5V it will clamp at 5V and anything less than 0V will be clamped to 0V.
As long as you don’t send it >18V, you should be good. I can’t think of any equipment that puts out that hot of a signal anyway.
Jaak, thanks for this. Very well thought-out design, once again! Looking forward to experimenting with playing dynamics control with my Ghosts - should be a ton of fun)
If there was a detune parameter that shifted the resonator center frequencies off the standard tuning would that kinda temper the resonator peaks? I guess one could use the micro tuning to do the same.
Is there or could there be a midi cc for tap tempo? I use the graviton m1 controller with a wireless foot switch and have a dedicated switch to send tap tempo to all my time-based pedals. It would be really useful to be able to just add this one into that mix if possible. Also open to other ideas to achieve the same (or better!) outcome. Thanks!
definitely still some mysteries in this midi programming, but the ability to have “steps” w these motorized faders fixes one of the only issues i had w ghosts. now i can go consistently to certain resonator “notes” using an encoder🤘🏽
