Sound of the Future
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Now available: a standalone control app for both Mac OS and Windows! Using the the software, you can control everything in 6Appeal with a Ableton-style GUI. You need a MIDI interface or a MIDI equipped soundcard and two standard MIDI cables.
See more here: http://www.spicetone.com/pages/6appeal-editor-and-firmware-update
There’s an excellent overview in VGuitar Forums. Many thanks Shawn!
I couldn’t resist copying it to our blog, though of course it’s better to read it in the original source here.
I’ve been able to spend a few hours with this now, & figured I’d share my initial thoughts.
Learning the Unit & my First Preset:
I read the manual about 10 times before I “got” it. No exaggeration – I have a highly annotated and dog-eared copy of the manual. The way all the features work together is beautifully engineered, logical and highly intuitive. The UI is unique, however, and has a learning curve. Over time, you get to appreciate reading a lot of info at a glance, but this will take time and a healthy set of grey matter/memory. (Having grown up in San Francisco in the ’60s and ’70s, I’m not sure I have the latter…)
I spent most of my time thus far in “Menu 1”, the basic sound sculpting menu, learning the features & making a preset for jamming with my buddies. The unit allows you to defeat the tone knob (Menu 1.10), and doing so creates a fuller sound that was more appealing to me. I used a Peavey Wolfgang with nice hot pups and a set of 9s. I suspect that lighter gauge strings like 9s may warrant defeating the tone stack.
As much as I love hex distortion, you don’t want to overuse it. Fortunately you can turn on processing of your mag pup signal (Menu 1.10). Then you can mix a bit of your processed mag pups in via the Mono pot.
THAT was an exciting discovery – the mix of hex distortion + some mag pup distortion to fill it out sounds fantastic.
Since I was driving it from a GK3 mounted close to the bridge of my guitar, I used BOTH Root Boost circuits (Menu 1.7 & 1.8 ). At the time, I was at home doing this at low volume…
A note on the manual – it uses a notation of “0On_16Off” when describing Root Boost and Output Boost settings. the “0” refers to the mono channel and the “16” refers to hex channels 1-6. Thus, to affect your mono/mag pups and your hex processing, you would use the setting 0On_16On (red).
First Jam:
I’ve been playing with my friends for years, using various gear & software, including a GR-55, a VG-99, tube amps, Amplitube, etc… This was the first time my drummer said, “THAT thing is BADASS!”
You can’t really get a feel for this unit until you *feel* it live, at playing volume. Continue reading “6Appeal First Impressions by Shawn”
We are proud to present our friend Paolo Angeli playing a full concert with his fantastic custom made guitar and our 6Appeal hexaphonic pedal in Sesc, in São Paulo, Brazil.
6Appeal is mostly used for clean multichannel routing of the pickup signals from his prepared Sardinian guitar. The guitar was initally developed for Pat Metheny – read more on Paolo’s website. Continue reading “Paolo Angeli Full Concert with 6Appeal”
We have a great addition to our team. Our trainee Sander Sinijärv studies electronic engineering in Tallinn Technical University AND plays guitar, both by himself and in local metal bands. Here are two demo videos that present hexaphonic / multichannel / polyphonic distortion provided by Spicetone’s 6Appeal pedal.
The first demo is more on indie / pop rock side. 6Appeal set to modulate controls (drive and volume mostly), resulting in luscious vibrating harmonics. The sound reminds a polyphonic synthesizer set to arpeggiato or sequencer mode. It’s all played in one take, using Roland GK-3 on a Schecter Ultra III guitar and 6Appeal polyphonic distortion pedal. The signal goes in stereo into two tube amps, and is picked up by trusty SM-57 microphones.
One of the greatest avant garde / folk / jazz of our time, Mr Paolo Angeli now uses 6Appeal as the center distortion piece of his multichannel guitar setup.
Do you know a hex player from Africa or Antarctica? 6Appeal is are already in Europe, North and South America, Asia and Australia but not yet in Africa and Antarctica. If you know anybody who’d be interested, link us:)!
Photo: On Friday, Taivo was assembling yet another patch of 6Appeal in our Tallinn laboratory.
Mr. Matthias Grob, a music tech guru and guitar hero visit us in our laboratory! Matthias lives in Brazil, so having him here was really something I’d never have expected a couple of months ago:)
Matthias is the inventor of Paradis Polydistortion, Echoplex digital, the earliest looper, Firewire guitar, many excellent VSTs and other stuff driving inspiration in musicians all around the globe.
Sure we introduced him to our hexaphonic 6Appeal pedal, and gave one of these to his enjoyment. We also got lot of interesting stuff from him:) Continue reading “A Guru in Our Laboratory!”
Our trademark is finally registered! It’s been protected for more than a year when we applied but the whole process too while…
Our friend Joel from Cycfi is almost ready with super exciting hexaphonic guitar pickup system (see http://www.cycfi-research.com/). This is as innovative as you can get with electric guitar technology!
He’s also got a 6Appeal pedal:
http://www.cycfi.com/2015/04/spicy-gadgets/
“We share a common ideal: Hexaphonic processing is the future!” Joel says.
We’re looking forward to build a guitar with brand new XR series pickups!
Good news: we got a better deal with a door-to-door delivery service, and offer now free shipping for 6Appeal hexaphonic distortion pedal!
/ unfortunately this was a temporary deal… /
