Filterbank 2

” We’ve had a version 1 Sherman Filterbank and a Quad Modular Filter for a few years now and are still one of the most used (and abused!) pieces of technology in our arsenal. Both feature heavily on our fourth album, which we’re presently recording. The Filterbank is incredibly flexible and the potential for really extreme processing is unique in a product with such a high quality signal path. (That Limit switch comes in handy, though!)”
The Chemical Brothers

What it is:
* A powerful analog filtering and distortion unit with a huge frequency range and a killing TUBE overdrive behavior.
* Easy and FUN to use, live and in the studio
* A small modular system? YES!
* Another 303 clone? NO!
* Affordable? YES!
* Application: processing every sound source, effect mixing, expanding modular systems, etc.
With the version 2, there are 5 extra switches and 2 extra LEDs, and on the back panel there’s one pedal input jack. A reworked front-panel lay-out and the grey metal color.
* The pedal input allows foot control of freq1and bypass/effect switching. You can rewire an old wah (because they have a switch on board) as shown by te diagram in ‘extra stuff’.
* A 5mm big green LED indicates “Effect on” on the FB 2
* A 3-way switch on the input stage allows Hi boost as well Hi cut (both boosting high frequencies at input)
* Another 3-way switch allows “Sensitrig” (which makes the triggering twice as sensitive for, e.g. clean string pad filtering) and “Limit”, which leaves the filters more “breathing room” for self-oscillation if the input stage is extremely overdriven.
* A 3-way switch has 2 general transpose functions : +1 Octave and + Quint which works nice with monophonic signals, and has a specific dirty character.
* A 3-way switch for the really powerful and quite revolutionary “Tracking” function – a monophonic pitch follower, that tunes filter 2 to the incoming pitch, and makes filter 1 slave of filter 2 via the harmonics switch. E.g. in position 2, filter 1 will be pitched one octave higher than filter 2, but still following the pitch. This extra switch activates the “tracking” in a normal or deep “track low” position, with stunning basses as result.
* The “revolutionary” aspect of this function is that never before any similar system enhances “on the spot” harmonics and creates new harmonics with fat analog circuits.
* An extra white LED indicates when the tracking system is “locked on”.
* At last there is an 3-way function switch in the LFO section, allowing sawtooth wave shape OR AR retrig : this forces an LFO restart from the AR trig with pumping grooves as unavoidable result.

Independent low pass, band pass and high pass filters with resonance, frequency and ADSR (positive – negative) controls
These are switchable between parallel or serial
The second filter has a 6 octave switch, and is synchronizable with the first filter
1 ADSR generator for these filters with an external output for use with more filterbanks or modular systems, triggered by the incoming signal, by a second sounds source, or by a gate
1 FM input for the filters, internal or external audio, LFO or CV
1 VCA overdrive with AR generator also
1 ring modulator input, internal or external audio, LFO or CV