Ribbons is essentially a mix console in a box!

Pedals
1

Yes. Ribbons, I got it for the Wow and Flutter, cause I always wanted the sound of strymon volantes tape modulation on my dry signal. Well, turns out that Ribbons is a god sent for my workflow. My setup is, send all my synths, keys, my guitar pedals (drive, comp, fuzz, eq), a mic preamp and a daw FX return into a line mixer. From there I can mute and unmute any instrument I want, and then it all goes out stereo into my stereo pedal chain which is nightsky, mobius, then RIBBONS, iridium, volante, timeline, big sky.

Ribbons, it does so so so much of the things I always needed but literally the greatest feature of them all is the compressor. I always wanted a compressor later in the chain after my modulation, the nightsky and after all my synths. The compressor is literally so so so good. But it gives you more console stuff, the high and low cuts with selectable Q is so practical and quick to do, the volume boost or cut, and then the selectable drive is also so good, since some synths dont have drive on them, which lets me saturate my ubxa. its also supergreat to have a stereo tape drive behind the mobius because you can do unique filter effects and wah wah into a drive, which is my favourite type of wah. Thats just page one.

The mix knob gives you access to close to through zero flanging, or also chorus, it all depends on you how you mix wow and flutter, broken tape etc. The possibilities are endless.

And then after all that goodness you have the stuff you actually buy it for, which is the lofi tape stuff and its the best of it.

But its unique first page and the fact that it gives you stereo compression and stereo drive makes it a pedal that I in fact use for every song and probably >50% of my studio time. It is one of the best buy I ever did and I am even more pleased to have such a unique, cool looking pedal in my collection (in pink) that was made by a passionate person. Thank you Jaak!!!

12 Likes
2

Thanks for the kind and thoughtful review. :blush:

2 Likes
3

Finally snagged a pink one a couple weeks ago after having my eye on the ribbons forever, but still haven’t gotten a chance to use it yet (stupid work and life). But my plan was to use it for submixes and busses as well, so it’s really awesome to hear that you’re getting such good results out of it! Makes me even more excited to finally sit down with it and explore what it can do.

I’m more of a DAW/studio guy and I was planning to give it its own spot in the patchbay so I can send whatever to it, but I’m really looking forward to hearing that compressor on some drums. Thank you for sharing your experience with it, it’s giving me inspiration to get back in there and start exploring!

4

Heyyy!

That sounds like a hell of a good idea.

I had mine on drums as well a lot, because I like some flanging on SD3 drums for the more realistic kit mixes, because it can give it that old Tape vibe from the early days if you have Drums that play a lot with the velocity and maybe are on the softer side. The comp is very squishy if you want, only beware that it can introduce some noise floor :wink:

Also, ribbons is imo the king of flanging and chorus but especially flanging. The flanger sounds are so so natural. You can simoly introduce flanging with adding some flutter and the turning the mix away from full wet. These sounds can get complex when you bring in wow flutter broken tape mode and the one with the tape catching up. You can get really amazing modulation with that. It has such a massive range to extreme fx, dont be surprised that most of the time depth is enough at 1/3 for stuff like broken tape and wow.

Also if you send stuff from the daw, you can do live filter sweeps. Ribbons is so good here because it has also selectable resonance, so you can even modulate synths with filter sweeps.

2 Likes
5

All of that sounds so awesome lol. I completely forgot and you reminded me of the filter that I’m super psyched to play with. The filter is modeled off of a vintage synth correct? Do we know or suspect which one it is? Man I’m so pumped to dig into this thing!

7

The LPF is a virtual-analog model of a Moog-style transistor ladder filter. The HPF uses the same general VA approach, but reimagines the ladder topology as a high-pass filter.

The compressor is modeled after the SP-303 Vinyl Sim compressor, which became a pretty iconic sound in hip-hop production and is associated with producers like J Dilla and Madlib. It combines compression and expansion, bringing up quieter sounds while compressing louder ones to keep the overall dynamics in a sweet spot.

That approach may seem a little unusual for a “tape emulator,” since we’re not specifically modeling the EQ and compression characteristics of tape itself, but I think it’s ultimately more useful and just as interesting. The high-pass and low-pass filters can get you immediately into that heavily filtered, telephone/dictaphone kind of space.

The wow, flutter, dropouts, and crinkle, on the other hand, are much more directly based on measurements and behaviors we observed in tape.

So I guess Ribbons is really more of a compact toolkit of lo-fi, media-inspired sounds than an attempt at a deeply authentic emulation of any one medium. It’s more of an exploration of what those sounds can become when they’re mixed and matched.

5 Likes
8

I’ve been chasing lo fi pedals since the days of J. Everman Lo Fi Filter pedal. I’ve had them all. Ribbons wins on every level.

1 Like
9

100%

And way better then the Gen loss, which introduces latency and is less flexible.

10

Not even strymon gives you stereo comp. Just that goof stereo compression alone I would pay 300 bucks for. Jaak! You should have split ribbons into 4 pedals and charge 300 for each, thats how good it is :joy::joy::joy::joy: But thank you for giving us that mich goodness in a single pedal :grin::grin::grin:

One question tho, how does the comp ratio work on ribbons9?

11

Ribbons also introduces latency, although for a different reason and with pretty different sonic results. A short delay is how you create different tape-style effects like chorusing, flanging, vibrato etc.

I think there’s a bit of misinformation floating around the web about the Gen Loss MKII and why it sounds the way it does. I can’t say for certain how Tom implemented it because I’ve never talked to him about the algorithm, so take this as my analysis rather than firsthand knowledge.

To my ears, its modulation sounds like a PSOLA-style windowed pitch-shifting algorithm, with some of the character you’d associate with older Eventide-style pitch shifters. Small segments of audio are buffered, shifted in pitch, and overlapped / crossfaded into the next segment. The size of those windows inherently introduces latency, while the repeated crossfading between windowed sections contributes to that characteristic grainy, gritty, slightly smeared or echo-y quality.

image
image664Ă—498 27.8 KB

I think when people describe their distaste for how that pedal sounds, they’re not necessarily hearing latency, what they’re hearing is just the sound of that PSOLA-style pitch shifting.

Ribbons takes a more traditional approach. Its vibrato is essentially a continuously modulated delay line, conceptually much closer to the way classic BBD vibrato works. There aren’t discrete windowed segments being stitched back together, so the modulation has a smoother and more continuous character. The latency is also quite short (around 20 milliseconds at maximum depth, and decreased to near zero if wow, flutter, dropouts are not used) so it generally isn’t perceived as a distinct delay or echo.

It’s pretty simple. As the knob is turned clockwise, the compression ratio transitions continuously from 1:1 to 5:1. The ratio and overall output level are the only parameters that change as the knob is turned.

5 Likes
12

Superb thank you!

What about the attack and release? To me it sounds like quick attack quick release tonget the squished fat sound

13

P.s. so the continuous ratio also means that I can play around with boosters before. If I want a more full range but subtle compression I can go low on the comp knob but boost the front end into it for instance

So essentially, I could use the comp knob as a ratio knob and the level from my strymon riverside (i use it as an always on preamp) as an input knob like on a 1176

14

what did you mean by that? the filter resonance hidden option is the Q factor control right? and its a single setting effecting both the lpf & hpf right? or is there a way to tweak the Q for the lpf& hpf individually?

specific query here, but just wondering i havent fully explored the utility hidden options but was just tweaking a moog lowpass for some useful resonance and have been trying to see if i could achieve similar results with the ribbons without luck so far…

15

I run a “micro station” within my studio, where I can setup and tear down quick setups for various synth toys, noise makers and guitar pedals. The final mix for this setup runs thru a Digitech Nautila into a Boss DD-20 Giga Delay into a Digitech Polara. Well … I just replaced the Polara with the Ribbons. With some time and experience with the Ribbons, I might just remove the Nautila as well. :sweat_smile:

16

Yes, its the hidden setting, press the right foorswitch and then adjust the q on the upper left encoder… i dont know them by heart atm tbh xD

If you tweak the mix knob the same way you can engage volume boost or cut. If you donthis with the comp and turn it over the middle to the right, sou change the comp to a tape drive. This drive has some very strong distortion tones in it lol

1 Like