Over the last month, I spent some time experimenting with my Vermona Retroverb Lancet. This clever machine has more than a few tricks up its sleeve so I thought I’d share some thoughts and ideas about this superb effects unit. A bird’s eye glance at the box could see that its made up of a spring reverb component with a built in filter and some modulation options via an LFO. At its most basic use, it’s a handy little box for adding some warmth to any sound with the spring reverb. This vintage reverb concept is well implemented in the box and the spring of the Retroverb sounds full and rich. No surf-a-billy band should be without one just for this quality sounding spring. But start plugging line sources other than a guitar signal and you’ll immediately discover a new kind of reverb drenched sound that you can modulate in a wealth of different ways.
Like all of Vermona’s tools, the interface is beautifully laid out. The vintage space age control panel makes the reverb unit a real lady killer in the studio. Every knob, button, input and rocker switch is thoughtfully laid out with a handy emphasis on the most important functions being the knobs you want to impulsively grab and spin. Although once you start spinning knobs and flipping switches, it can get difficult to get your head around what’s actually happening to the sound, but after some time with the unit you can start to see that the physical layout of the features can really help you understand what’s happening. It’s worth studying the panel for a bit and thinking your way through the signal flow. You can tell a great deal of thought went into the design of this unit and the result is a playable effects unit as if it were an instrument of its own.
The reverb can be pre or post. Depending on if it’s pre or post, you can set the in & out stages of the unit to mix in the amount of spring reverb by spinning the mix knob left or right. This is a handy live feature to set the mix stage this way, because with the flip of a switch and a slight turn of a single knob you can drastically morph different sounds this way which can be a great for a track variation in an arrangement. The In/Out section also offers 2 forms of distortion. Increasing the gain, you’ll reach a point that creates a warm type of distortion I normally associate with soft clipping found on some analog mixers. Pushing up the drive knob will produce a distortion that’s more compressed and with the right input signal can produce something that sounds more like bit reduction. Both sound great on everything I fed it, but I think these features would especially be a hit with guitarists. To the right of the In/Out is the VCA modulation section which, curiously at first, is separate from the Out section. However, with spring reverb or reverb in general I believe it’s often less is more, so it does seem appropriate that the VCA modulation parameters would be kept separate. This makes it quick and easy to work with the spring should you simply want to use the device like a guitar pedal only for the reverb and the distortion effects.
The filter is a multi-mode filter with band, highpass & lowpass filters. There is quite a range in the cutoff and the resonance will drive it effortlessly into self oscillation at just about 1/2 way there. This filter is based on the M.A.R.S synthesizers they produced about 10 years ago. It’s a filter with a unique design of its own and not modeled from the Moog ladder or other common filter models. While experimenting with the Retroverb I acheived rewarding results for this machine just using the filter by itself. The filter has two modulation sources, the LFO (we’ll get to this cool LFO shortly) and a switchable alternate source that could be a control voltage, an envelope follower, or the built in envelope generator. And if the source signal you are feeding it is all skin and bones, they carried over the ‘balls’ feature from the Kick Lancet which compresses the filter input to fatten it up. This filter has bite, it’s a great addition to any synth toolbox. In fact, if you don’t need the spring reverb, Vermona offers the Filter Lancet which is same exact design of the Retroverb, but without the spring reverb. It’s worth looking into.
If modulations the game, this box has your name. The final sections of the Retroverb provide some modulation sources. You get a LFO and an envelope generator with some very unique features. The LFO has the usual suspects in terms of available waveforms (btw thank you Vermona for including the sine LFO option in this Lancet), except there’s one at the end called EG. This means that this shape is generated by the shape of the envelope generator. What’s cool about this is that you can create your own LFO waveforms from various attack/decay settings from the envelope. If you switch the VCA mod source to EG and set the LFO shape to EG you can get some fun sounds by simply varying the decay/release on the envelope. By switching the LFO range to LO/TR, the LFO will reset on the gate signal firing off the envelope when set to gate. This means you can easily get your sounds to sync to a track’s tempo if using a modular system that feeds the trigger input on the back. Pretty slick.
The Retroverb unit has a bunch of handy inputs that allows you to feed CV/Gate signals and connect numerous pedals. It takes an audio input, a pedal or control voltage, a input switch that can take a control voltage to trigger a ‘crash’ of the spring, a trigger in that takes a gate signal, and an input switch for bypassing the unit with a pedal. This makes the unit a handy performance tool which could be used side by side with any instrument being solo’d. With a collection of pedals, many features could be used hands free, making an attractive addition even for a drum set. With so many inputs, this brings up my only criticism of the unit. It could be that I’m just spoiled at this point, but while using this machine with my modular synthesizer system, I just wished they would have added two more features – two outputs for the modulation section. LFO/EG outputs would have been extremely useful and could have lead to some interesting experiments modulating more than one track Retroverb style.
This leads me to some final thoughts on using the Retroverb as part of a bigger system. First off, the entire Lancet series work amazing together. Like Voltron, the MonoLancet coupled with its eurorack dock, and the Retroverb all come together to make one über mono monster synth. Altogether, the specs for look like this:
- 2 oscillators. Triangle, Saw, Noise, Pulse with PWM. Either or both oscillator can be free running to use elsewhere by detaching the oscillators from the signal path. They can also be shut off to use the system exclusively with external sound sources. PWM via midi for both oscillators, or cv for each independently. FM modulation of either or both oscillators via CV. Pitch Modulation via envelope, LFO or Glide. Global tune.
- 2 filters – a Moog Ladder style LP filter & a unique multimode filter with HP/LP/BP. Both reach self oscillation and can be run in a series or parallel. 2 filter inputs. Moog Ladder style LP filter has FM modulation via CV, optional velocity modulation, and optional cutoff after-touch modulation. Envelope modulation on both filters.
- Filter key track
- Envelope follower
- 2 envelope generators. One can be triggered by CV or an Envelope follower
- 2 VCAs both can be free running, modulated by the envelopes, external cv. One can be modulated by an envelope follower and an LFO. One has a full sustain mode, velocity modulation, and manual trigger.
- 2 LFOs. One with square, triangle, & sample/hold. One with ascending/descending sawtooth, square, sine, sample/hold, and EG shape. One can be reset with gate signals, and has an adjustable range of Low (.05 -> 25 HZ) & High (1 -> 300 Hz). Clever syncing of trigger signals allows one LFO to do double duty as a 3rd envelope.
- Spring Reverb switchable pre/post with crash feature that vibrates the spring. Clever syncing of the crash trigger input can allow this to be used as a alternate noise source. Adjustable global reverb level.
- Midi/CV converter
- 2 audio inputs, 2 audio outputs, 4 pedal inputs (1 cv, 2 gate, 1 envelope follower, bypass switch).
- Midi implementation with velocity on/off, pitch wheel on/off, modwheel on/off, aftertouch on/off, legato on/off, and glide on/off.
- Integration between 1/4″ jack systems and 1/8″ eurorack systems.
- Solid metal construction with small footprint.
If you crammed all of these features in a single box, you’d have an analogue setup in league with a Moog Voyager Rack and its modular extensions. However, the Vermona sound and design is very different from Moog so it’s probably better to think of them not as competitors, but as two systems that complement each other very well. In fact, if you collect Mooger Fooger boxes, the Lancet machines are natural extensions to this kind of cv/gate analogue playground. The Moog MF-107 FreqBox is a great source for feeding a sub oscillator into the Lancet system. As far as modern analag processing goes, reverb is pretty much the only standard analog effect not packaged into a Mooger Fooger. You can achieve a sort of reverb with the MF-104 Delay and MF-108M Cluster Flux, but the Vermona Retroverb has this covered in spades.
After spending some time experimenting with the Vermona Retroverb lancet, I made a track that incorporates most every feature mentioned in this article. I found the results to be very musical, and had a great time throughout the process. The sounds are sourced from the Vermona MonoLancet, the DRM mkIII, and the Retroverb along with some Mooger Foogers, a DSI Poly Evolver, and some eurorack stuff from Pittsburgh Modular. All tracks were then ran through the Retroverb on a return track. The Retroverb is pure fun and one of those tools that reminds you of why you got into synthesis in the first place. Hats off to the team at Vermona. Here’s the track, enjoy!
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