u-He Twangstrom - Electronic Delivery

The u-He Twangström is a flexible spring reverb box-of-tricks. If you're familiar with Bazille, you might already have come across its built-in spring unit. u-He took that one, then modeled two more reverb tanks, paired it with drive section, filter stage, envelope, and mod matrix. It emulates a hand-picked selection of the most popular units you will find in classic guitar and instrument amplifiers, recreating the odd character of real springs.

As a faithful emulation of a mechanical device, Twangström needs to be handled well. Many of the technical parameters are user-adjustable in real time, and these can be controlled via MIDI or using the internal LFO and envelope generator. With its multimode resonant filter, Twangström is a unique and powerful tool which can deliver highly unusual, evolving textures... especially when the signal is tossed around using the modulation matrix!

Shakeable springs

Hitting your computer won’t make Twangström shatter, so u-He added a twang control. This is used to shake the springs, either manually or through modulation and automation. You might think this is a gimmick for which you have no further use (apart from waking up the neighbors), but if you modulate it slightly, everything comes to life!

Tank controls

Twangström's reverb is based on physical modeling. As opposed to plug-ins based on impulse responses (IR), u-He's approach mimics the physics of mechanical reverberation. By simulating the wavefront traveling through a medium, all the aspects of excitation, reflection, dispersion, interference, and other audio properties can be included. Twangström does not mimic the sonic result, but simulates the physical device. This means that all dimensions of the device are controllable in realtime, on a per-sample-basis – which all boils down to quite some power at your fingertips!

Envelope

The envelope in Twangström features 4 different modes and can pick up the signal from either input, output or external sidechain. You can select between Envelope Follower, Attack and Decay, Attack and Release, or Cyclic modes. The last one is similar to a 2-stage LFO. Shown controls will adapt to the selected mode, with Threshold not appearing while in Envelope Follower mode.

Modulation Matrix

The modulation matrix has three general purpose modulation slots, and yes, you can select shake as one of many targets to modulate the Twang control!

Low Frequency Oscillator

The LFO features different time bases, including a non-synchronized one measured in seconds. Synchronized options include both dotted times and triplets. There are 8 different waveforms to choose from, with 2 of them being stepped or glide random shapes.

System Requirements:

• Mac OS X 10.7 or newer, Windows 7 or newer, or Linux
• 1GB RAM, more recommended
• 50MB free disk space
• 1000 × 600 or larger display
• Modern CPU (Sandy Bridge or newer recommended)
• Host software