My Father's Cravat

Interesting delay plugin, which differs form most other ones. A 15 tap delay with a lot of separately adjustable features for each tap! So rather no plug and play plugin, but a paradise for tweakers and delay sound freaks.

The global parameters are limited to Mix, Output and Spatial (Binaural), while each channel/tap offers Time (0 - 4999ms), Gain, Pan, Feedback, Mod Rate, Mod Depth (nice for some flexible phasing or chorusing, even more, if combined with additional, differently adjusted taps), Auto Pan, Pitch (o, -8, +8, if activated with Shimmer option too), Type (Reserve, Vintage), Series (Chain instead of parallel routing), Phase Invert.

With all these options almost endless combinations are possible, so something for players, who really look for different and more complex delay and modulation sounds, which more "normal" delays do not offer.

The presets allow a first impression of the capabilities, but of course a lot more also is possible. The taps can be activated separately, so you can also use a single tap alone too, which I personally recommended first, to discover, what all the controls do and how the results sound and afterwards you can better adjust more complex multi-tap delays.

The delays sound nicely musically, not too sterile or too digitally. I personally am not the biggest delay fan, but I must admit, this plugin offers nice and creative results, if someone looks for more unique and more complex delay sounds between adding some decent dimensionality and very complex, cinematic or experimental soundscapes.

A very unique "boutique" delay, I personally do not know a comparable other one. Fair price too.

Nice plugin for some fine-tuning or "vintageizing" of sounds and signals.

The upper section rather alters to sound with Sidechain Env, FET Comp, (4 different) Preamps, Sag, Width, Mix, Clipper, Limiter, Final Tailoring (HP/LP filters basically), Output, while the lower section adds things, mostly noise (White, Pink, Brown, Blue, Violet, Green), Rain (with different options), Motion and a noise filter.

Sometimes well usable, sometimes maybe not so much, but you also do not have to use everything at the same time, but this plugin offers a lot of useful options, for which you otherwise often need different plugins, so some nice "Swiss Army Knife" for a lot of different ways of signal optimizations, I would say.

Fair price too.

Interesting, but very different amp plugin concept, especially for clean to edge of breakup or crunch sounds and for tweakers, but also (maybe still) not totally perfect in my opinion.

A manual with some more detailed informations would have been helpful, also at least some hints, on which all these fantasy named components are based. Due to the big differences, which result in the use of more or less components dynamic levels can vary intensely, I also found the Drive section not so great sounding, especially not in combination with the Open Razor and Bartitsu amps, I found Post Drive (I suppose, this simulates power amp saturation) sounding better to me. (Later I found out, that Tuner On obviously adds some unwanted distortion to the sounds, deactivating it really improves the results, especially if you use the Drive section.) After a while I even managed to adjust Open Razor to sound well usable for me while my favorite at the moment became British Saddleback. In principle the amps give you nicely different voiced sounds, just like the preamps do. This is a plugin for subleties, although a lot of subtleties also can alter a sounds intensely.;-).

Adding a gain control to both the Preamp and Amp section would have been an advantage, Drive alone for me does not do the same, while Post Drive does a great job.

If you take the time to find out, what's working well and how to adjust and optimize the sounds to your personal wishes and if you have managed to level out things properly, you can get really great sounds, due to all the component combinations in almost endless variety. But, as already mentioned, not everything automatically sounds good, so storing the results, you like, as your own presets is recommended.

The preamps and amp models really sound differently, also all the fine-tuning options and the Sweetener in principle work fine, at least, after you have learned, how to adjust them nicely, first it can look complicated, but in fact it is not really, so definitely useful, not to speak of all the different compressors and their options. Tightness or even frequency adjustable HP/LP filters, or comparable sound shaping tools are available in both pre- and post-editing sections.

Certainly no plug and play plugin, you could even be disappointed from the first results, but if you spend some time with it, you can get really wonderful and also very different sounds out of it with both American and British and both vintage and modern characters and for all these sounds you needed a lot of different, and also not so cheap gear in reality, which you here get in a single package.

You also can deactivate eg. the Drive section and the Cabinet section and use external plugins and IR's instead, but as a basic sound source, also with other external effects this plugin works very well, so it also can become a nice "pedal platform" for effects like eg. wah, chorus, rotary, univibe, phaser, tremolo, tape echo, delay, polyphonic octaver or harmonizer, (spring) reverb, ...

Despite of my few complaints I give the plugin the highest rating, first, because it is something really unique and different, the plugin market is so overcrowded with always the same things, a lot of plugins just copy each other or the same real gear and everyone promises, to have made it better than all other ones, so this plugin takes itself out of this - marketing - competition in some way, which I really appreciate, second, because for all the options and features the price is more than fair.

_.

Addition: Just got the update to the 2.1 version, which improved some things positively, certain things now even sound and react more naturally, the interaction between preamp, amp and drive stages seems to have been harmonized more, so especially "hotter" sounds are easier adjustable and sound better to me, also an additional (zero watt) power stage has been added within the Type (amp) section (including damping, presence and resonance) and the tuner does not affect the sounds anymore.

As the plugin is now, it's only up to the user, if it sounds great or not. All, you need, is there...

...and even a lot more...

Very well done.