Patching & Routing
1) 9V PSU input - Standard (minus inside) pedal power supply input. Note that
the ConVertor will not turn on until a TS jack is inserted into the main input (3)
2) POWER LED- When a power source (9V PSU / battery) is supplied and the
main input is plugged in, this red LED indicates that the synth is powered on.
3) Main INPUT - Mono (TS) instrument jack that can accept analog audio from
line level (tapes, CD’s…), instrument pickup levels (electric guitar and bass) or
down to microphone level sources (from dynamic mics). The input impedance
looking into this input is 100k ohms.
4) Main THRU out - Unbuered through connection to the main input.
5) PITCH CV out - 1V/octave 0-8V CV corresponding to the pitch detected by
the ACO from the main input.
6) ENV CV out - CV representation of the input’s level generated by an enve-
lope follower. The decay time constant of this envelope follower is about 43ms.
17) GATE / TRIG CV out - Stereo output with 9V gate CV out (from ACO) on
the left channel and 9V trigger CV out (15ms pulse width) on the right
channel. 17) Gate CV in - Secondary gate input (post-VCA). Gate threshold
voltage is 3.5v. Use a Y cable to split the gate (L) and thetrigger (R).
20) VCA CV in - Secondary VCA input. Plugging a cable into this input
bypasses the internal VCA.
21) OCTAVE CV in - Shifts the ACO output frequency by -2 to +2 octaves.
22) HARMONY CV in - CV input to shift ACO output frequency by -7 to +5
-4-
mix the dry signal into the output via the SRC/Synth mix knob.
6) Input HPF switch (high pass filter) - A 12dB/oct filter used to cut unwanted
low frequencies below the fundamental pitch. For example,if the user plays
regular electric guitar, he can benefit from filtering the input at 80Hz (down).
The minimum setting is 16Hz (up) and should be used if no filtering is desired.
8) LPF knob - Controls the input filter which can be used to emphasize the
lower frequencies and thus help with pitch detection. In general,it should be
set to fully counterclockwise unless you don’t like its effect. In that case you can
bypass it by turning this knob fully clockwise.
9) LPF TO switch - Sets the input filter to either the input where it can help
with pitch tracking or to the output where it’s audible.
13) ENV amount knob - The envelope (ENV) of an audio signal is the audio’s
amplitude behavior over time. The ENV CV in the ConVertor synth is
generated by an envelope follower (pre filters) and flows to the internal
VCA (affecting the synth’s volume) by default. The ENV follower detects the
level of the audio input and generates CV (control voltage) analogous to
the audio’s level between 0V and 8V. The ENV AMT knob can change the ENV
shape from 1:1 in its full clockwise position, through infinity:1 in the middle
position all the way to -1:1 (negative ENV) in the full counterclockwise
position, which is the complete opposite of the audio’s original envelope (ie.
instead of the ENV of a picked string decay down gradually, it will rise up
-5-
WARNING! Risk of permanent hearing damage!
Before the synth is patched to any guitar level device (ie. preamps/
amps/effects) turn down the OUTPUT level knob to around 9 o’clock!
DO NOT keep your head close to any amp speaker while you or
(especially) anyone else is changing the controls of the synth.
semitones in a just intonation scale (see table 1).
The proper voltage range for all CV inputs is 0-9v but they are protected
against signals with higher voltages than 9V so such signals won’t damage the
ConVertor synth.
The input section / ENV
5) InPut GAIN - Use this knob to amplify
the main input level. This preamp is
transparent and rangesfrom minimum 0dB
(no change) to +40dB.
7) Main input meter - This 4 character LED
meter will show you the audio input level.
The bottom LED illuminates when the gate
(-48dBu) is on, and the top LED will indicate
approximately when the input is too loud and
may be distorting. Clipping the input should
be avoided if possible as it can result in worse
frequency tracking and will be audible if you
