TEFI Vintage Lab THE SMILIN’GHOST- Dynamic Percussion Tremolo

TEFI Vintage Lab THE SMILIN’GHOST- Dynamic Percussion Tremolo

Overview

Renato is frightened by the ectoplasm that suddenly emerges from the fireplace, but you must not be afraid: it is a good ghost with a nice flickering laugh. The Smilin’ Ghost is a Dynamic Tremolo Percussion, flagship of TEFI projects, developed after months of research and experimentation. It uses an optocoupler like in vintage amplifiers driven by our modern wide-range LFO (from 0.7Hz to 15Hz). The special proprietary circuit “TRFI”, totally analog, allows to control the activation of the modulation depending on the dynamics of the instrument’s execution: in this way it is possible to decide, with the energy impressed on the notes played, the activation or not effect. The two types of modulations are:

• Tremolo: gives a uniform modulation, driving the opto-isolator with a sine or square wave.
• Percussion: The envelope is a percussive type; using a lever-switch you can decide between fast and slow decay.

The LFO speed can also be controlled with an externally connectable expression pedal. The T.R.F.I control can also be activated with remote control.

Features

During the design step we aimed to create a small, full analog magic box capable of creating significant modulation effects on any type of instrument: electric guitar, organ and piano. The Percussion repeat effect can be applied to Farfisa organs to obtain the effect loved by Rick Wright. The T.R.F.I. control was designed to prevent the OCR “eating” the attacks of the single notes played when it is closed, but also to create personal ambients such as a Rhodes piano: just adjust the Sens command to the right point to enter new unexplored worlds.