WAY MORE THAN DYNAMIC AUDIO BENDING !

Elsstic Bender Virtual Pedal VST

A dynamic triggered pitch envelope using a vintage digital pitch-shifter design.

Originally invented for guitar or bass, ELASTIC Bender can be used on any source signal, such as guitar, bass, drums, vocals or anything you can think of!

Dynamic wah and auto-wah effects have brought new ways of expression and you could think of the ELASTIC Bender as a kind of dynamic pitch shifter or dynamic Whammy.

Basic operation : while incoming audio peaks are processed by the initial stage, they will trigger a custom shaped pitch envelope that will dynamically bend the note(s) starting lower than incoming pitch or higher than incoming pitch. You can act on the depth, speed and shape of the pitch envelope before it comes back to the incoming un-pitched input signal.

This is a very expressive effect, very funky sounding with short envelope time.

But there are way more inside than just auto-bend!

ELASTIC Bender is based on vintage pitch shifters design, emulated analog input stage and custom modulation capabilities. The design gives it a sound of it's own and could even be used just for it's color.

MODE B (10ms) can produce unusual lush chorus, wild flange and ring modulation type effects.

The MODE D (300ms) can produce pseudo grainy reverb, slap back effects and early vintage pitch shifter pitch change.

Feedback provides some nasty sound effects, ELASTIC Bender can even self-oscillate!

Input and output circuits are analog modeled so ELASTIC Bender will nicely overdrive if pushed too far...

Oh and yeah it looks like a BOSS pedal, mainly because I think this effect would suit nicely into their range and I am a Vintage BOSS pedal addict myself, I own 15 of these babies! :D

The ELASTIC Bender can also be modified from the inside!

There are 3 sources to trigger the envelope: audio peaks, built in LFO and trigger from incoming MIDI notes for great tempo synced rhythmic sequences.

EL-2 uses true stereo processing with slightly changing envelope times between left and right for a nice mono to stereo send widening effect or stereo separation.

Of courseyou will find dry/wet level adjustement, peak trigger sensitivity and even VCA pitch envelope curve shaping.

Get Elastic Bender v 2.0


Elastic Bender VST Pedal

Elastic Bender Videos & Sounds Demos Playlists.

New videos will come soon, these are mostly old 2014 videos from version 1 but are still relevant

Elastic Bender 2.0 FX Features and Details

ANALOG MODELED INPUT & OUTPUT TRANSISTOR OVERDRIVE

If pushed to far the circuitry will nicely overdrive, this is noticeable also with high amount of feedback or when the pedal reach self-oscillation.

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BEND DIRECTION

The bend can start lower before reaching the actual incoming pitch or the other way around.

Envelope time follows the SPEED setting to go from very short to very long audio bends. The incoming dry signal can be mixed with the effected one to produce chorus, flange, ring modulation or early vintage pitch shifter effects.

3 TRIGGER SOURCES

The pitch envelope can be triggered either by the detected audio peaks, the internal LFO or MIDI notes.

The internal LFO can also be re-triggered by an incoming peak if needed or can be free running. The third source available: incoming MIDI notes, is a nice way to get precise control over the bend triggers or to create precise tempo synced rhythmic patterns.

The pitch envelope shape can also be adjusted from log to exponential curve, middle point being a linear response.

FEEDBACK

ELASTIC Bender uses feedback paths to produce flanging or wild pitch shifted effects. If the feedback is set to max the pedal will start to self-oscillate, which means that even if there is no more audio coming into the effect you can still produce an analog sound and modulate it somehow. This will end as soon as you dial back the feedback amount.

TRIGGER PEAK SENSITIVITY

You will need to adjust the sensitivity to match the behavior you want based on the incoming signal, for example: only triggers when hit hard.

Basically you would add sensitivity for low level signals and reduce it for high levels.

TRUE STEREO PROCESSING & MONO 2 STEREO

You can use ELASTIC Bender as an insert on mono or stereo channels both channels will be processed independently.

If you use a mono signal such as a guitar on a stereo channel, you can use the ELASTIC Bender as an insert or as a send effect. The stereo separation feature will change the time relation between both delay lines and produce a stereo pitched output from your mono signal.

GUI & AUTOMATION

Most of ELASTIC Bender's parameters support automation and can also be MIDI learned and controlled by external MIDI Hardware, which gives you far more ways to be experimental.

(Additional technical info is into the manual.)

If used in real time, ELASTIC Bender EL-2 MODE B use only a few delay stages (10ms) and is suitable for real time playing while the MODE D uses more stages (300ms) which makes it more useful when the wet signal is blended with the dry source.

There is no similar effect that I can think of as a plugin effect, the auto bend concept is only featured in some ZOOM multi effects unit (first seen on a 9030 Pro FX Unit) and is known as the "bendchorus" it only features a short bend ability though and there are no other controls besides the speed and depth.

As a musician and also guitarist I think that an auto dynamic bend effect is very close to the expressivity given by a dynamic envelope filter pedal and that this effect should be more known and more used, a special trick of mine is to use it either as a solo send FX for Stereo Flanging craziness or to use it in dynamic pitch mode with a Wah pedal before for extreme funkiness.

Maybe I will make a hardware boutique pedal or rack at some point... :)

Windows:

Windows 7 to 10 and higher, 64bit host, plugin provided formats are VST2 and VST3.

Mac OS:

Mac OS (10.10) to Catalina/Big Sur or higher, 64bit host, plugin provided format is AU (AudioUnits).

About AudioUnits format:

AU is Apple s proprietary audio technology, part of the Core Audio provided by Mac OSX. It is part of the operating system so it provides low latency and system-level support for the interface. Most DAWs developed for Mac OSX support the Audio Units interface due to its stability and system-level solutions (which also means faster processing). Apple Logic only utilizes Audio Unit format plugins, but other DAWs such as Ableton can also use these.

One or two DAWs like for example Cubase do not support Audiounits directly yet but you can still easily load an AU plugin with the help of a VST host plugin, some popular solutions are DDMF Metaplugin or BlueCat's Patchworks, a popular free one that recently got open sourced is KUSHVIEW ELEMENT. You will find info and a direct link to latest free binaries at the support/OSX Support part of my website.

Protools:

Avid Protools only supports its proprieratary format AAX at the moment but you can still easily load an AU or VST plugin with the help of a VST/AU host plugin, some popular solutions are DDMF Metaplugin or BlueCat's Patchworks, others might be available that I am not aware of yet.

Other info:

Working fine on Mac M1 (even if not native ARM yet). Working perfectly using Apple Rosetta 2 compatibility (only needed for VST format) AU format should load fine without doing anything else. Native ARM support and Mac VST3 format are coming with next update.

Read the Elastic Bender v2 Manual

(soon)

For now here is a quick overview that should get you started!

ELASTIC BENDER MANUAL V2.


Owner of 32bit version 1.0 wants to upgrade?

GO HERE

Change Log

You can check your current version with a right click on the GUI.
Updates for Elastic Bender VST are free until major version updates


01/25/21 - v2.0
  • Cross Platform capability (Windows VST2/VST3 and Mac AU(Audiounit).
  • 64bit build using latest OS and IDE(Windows 10 VisualStudio and Mac Xcode).
  • Updated GUI(graphic Interface).
  • Bypass parameter added.
  • Stability bug fixes.
  • Catalina / Big Sur fix (Mac).
  • Auval fix (Mac).
  • Automation and preset system fix (Win/Mac).
12/17/14 - v1.1
  • Added optional scaled pitch in Mode D
12/04/14 - v1.0
  • Initial release.



Get It !

Get ELASTIC BENDER v2 for PC & MAC

Elastic Bender comes with both PC & Mac Installers.
*works on Mac M1 even if not native ARM yet (see compatiblity info tab)