I made an electric guitar with reverb

Surrealistic MG-1 Plus is a loving recreation of the Realistic MG-1, an oddball synthesizer sold by the 1980's consumer electronics giant Radio Shack.
Post Reply
Rahodees
Posts: 8
Joined: Wed Apr 20, 2022 6:49 am

I made an electric guitar with reverb

Post by Rahodees »

I may be last to the party on this one but I figured out how to get a pretty good reverb effect on the Surrealistic. The only catch is you have to be playing at least two notes at once--the reverb effect then comes in as a very quiet echo of the last note played.

The "trick" (or very basic technique you all already know about probably) is to add a tiny bit of poly, and have priority set to "last", and have the instrument on a long decay time. Then if you play for example C, and then while holding it down also play another note, there will be a very faint echo of the C as long as you hold them both down, and it comes across to my ear as reverb.

Sounds really cool to hold down multiple notes while playing, not in chords, just the last few notes you played.

If you're curious, my "electric guitar" settings are

MODULATION
Mod wheel on
Saw
sync in,
tone 2 at +1 or so
Rate to taste

TONE 1
Sync in
Sawtooth
Octave -1

TONE 2
8 semitones (though there are a lot of great sounding settings here, sounds like using different amps on the guitar
Octave 0
Sawtooth

CONTOUR:
Sustain Out
Contoured
Rise time close to zero
Fall time just under eight

FILTER
Full keyboard tracking.
Cutoff 6
Peak 2

POLY
Octave 0
Sawtooth

MIX
Tone 1 and 2 max
Noise bell just below 2
Poly just below noise and bell (it actually makes a difference imo)

OTHER
Priority high
Trigger: Retrigger
Master octave: 0
Poly detune, just slightly flat, optional
Keyboard glide, just a tiny bit seems right sometimes.
Post Reply

Return to “Surrealistic MG-1 Plus Synthesizer”