Product Review - Looptrotter Monster
Article Preview :: FET Compressor & Valve Distortion Processor
Reviews : Processor
With a FET compressor/limiter and tube-saturation circuit on each channel, there’s plenty here to dirty up your sounds. Get ready to mash with the Monster...
I’m a big fan of ‘attitude’ compressors. You know what I mean by that, of course. The sort of thing you can really spank a loop or drum bus with, twisting, mangling and otherwise abusing the source into something beautifully unrecognisable. Something you can use to take a clean, limp-sounding drum part and mash it into mojo-laden oblivion. So when a two-channel, 3U, FET compressor named ‘Monster’, with waspish warning livery, two chunky VU meters, a tube-saturation circuit and a mix control for parallel processing, was drawn to my attention, I could hardly resist the chance to put it through its paces.
Overview
I’ll try not to dwell too long on the layout of this debut product from new Polish company Looptrotter, as it’s large and spacious enough to see on the main photo. The paint job is the only thing about this device to scream ‘marketing’ to me: I’m sure that the colour scheme won’t be to everyone’s taste, but I get bored easily with understated grey or black boxes and I loved it! Despite the gaudiness, though, there are no gimmicks. Everything on the front panel serves a useful purpose, and there’s space enough to get the fattest sausage-fingers in amongst the controls. The meters and legends are clear, and the knobs and switches seem to be of good, reassuringly solid quality.
Each channel comprises three sections: a switchable FET compressor/limiter (it’s the same circuit, so you can use it in one or other mode but not both in series), a tube-saturation circuit and a master section, in which you can both blend the dry and treated sections to taste and set the master output level. The first two sections can each be bypassed independently, as can each channel as a whole (a true hard bypass, so signals are still passed when the Monster is sleeping). The two channels can also be linked, so that they work from the same side-chain signal and attack and release controls. The input and output levels, tube-processing controls, and mix and main output controls remain independent on each channel. Two VU meters are switchable to display either gain reduction or output level on their respective channels.
Easy Squeeze & Crunch
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Mon 21 May 2012
Sound On Sound : Est. 1985