Lovetone Meatball

Famous users of the Meatball: Bootsy Collins, Larry Graham, The Beastie Boys, Norman Cook (aka Fatboy Slim), Lo-Fidelity Allstars, Coldcut, Howie B, Adrian Sherwood, Doug Wimbish,... (more).

After Lovetone stopped production, the Lovetone Meatball was sold by Dinosaural, the company of Dan Coggins, the Lovetone tech and chief design engineer, for a while (not anymore).

Lovetone

The MEATBALL is an amazing envelope follower/triggered filter - the funky blue alternative to a high fibre diet that has put a smile on (or at least taken the frown off) a lot of faces! Because of the large number of controls, and because changing the position of any one affects the way in which the others will interact, this offers a truly vast array of sound possibilities (from the sublest effects to frightening untamed excesses!) and means that the Meatball can be "tuned in" to dance the most intimate tango without treading on your toes or just wave its arms in the air and let it all hang out. (The filter frequencies can also be tuned precisely to allow laser guided goosing of high gain distortion).

While the Meatball is capable of the most gratuitous "auto-wah" funk abuse and visits the promised land of Bootsy "You won't need any spaghetti with this Meatball it's real phat" for fun, this represents but a mere fraction of its potential which includes totally unique new sounds. The large frequency and dynamic range makes it equally suitable for bass, guitar, keyboards/synths, samplers and general studio use - in fact any audio signal whether a single sound source or programme material.

By treating simple waveforms it can become an analogue synth in its own right, or it can be used as an aural exciter to add sparkle and depth particularly to lifeless samples. The external trigger facility enables the filter to be triggered by a completely separate audio source which can be another instrument, pulse or click or even touching a lead connected to the input! A great way to exploit this is to use one aux send on your mixer for the sound source and another one for the trigger so you can literally trigger anything with anything which as you can imagine can give rise to some pretty freaky effects.

Featuring:

• Sensitivity control
• Attack and Decay controls
• Range control (can be used to fine-tune the frequency response and create subtle effects)
• Resonance control
• Blend which mixes straight signal with effect creating a whole new palette of sounds.
• Pedal facility (allows the use of a standard passive volume pedal to create wah-type effects)
• FX loop - insert octaves and distortion for some real 70's cheese, or use for external trigger facility
• Up and Down response curves
• High, Low, and Band-pass filter modes
• Four selectable filter frequency ranges
• Triggering off full or half bandwidth and trigger off (useful for instance as a static tone control or for adding or scooping tone with blend)
• LED showing filter response
• LED showing effect on/off

Dinosaural (2004-2008)

"Real-Time" Wah Effects

As well as its most obvious enveloping applications, the Meatball offers a wide range of static filter options. With the addition of the correct expression pedal this enables it to be used as a normal wah, but with considerably more options (all five panel controls on the right "Filter" half of the pedal still remain active).

The Bespeco VM18L is the ideal expression pedal for this (as well as for the pedal inputs on other Lovetone effects). Please note the VM18L is not supplied as standard, but it is available from Dinosaural as a separate item. Although any passive volume pedal could be used, it may not provide the optimum sweep and will in most cases have the incorrect polarity for "real time" wah use.

IMPORTANT: When used with the Meatball Pedal 1 and Pedal 2 inputs, the VM18L stereo jack connector must be inserted "half way". To ensure proper operation push the connector in fully and then pull out by one "click" of the contacts - which is approximately 3mm (or 1/8").
The VM18L slide switch (which is situated on the right hand edge of the base underneath the rocker section) should be moved forwards (towards the toe end).

Panel Settings:

• Colour: max/optional
• Intensity: min
• Blend: max/optional
• Trigger switches: "Down" and "Off"
• Filter switches: "Lo" or the next one up, Band Pass mode/optional

Theoretically Band Pass would be the filter mode of choice, but High Pass and Low Pass are just as viable and provide interesting alternatives (especially for filtering fuzz sounds). The 4-position Lo/Hi switch determines the frequency range. The settings are approximately an octave apart and the lowest two are the most appropriate for normal wah effects. Intens. sets the bottom frequency within any given range (which is lowest when it is fully anti-clockwise). As the control is turned clockwise the bottom frequency is raised so that when it reaches the fully clockwise position the range is reduced to zero and the expression pedal has no effect. Using the two controls it is therefore possible to set the limits of the sweep available.

The "wah" set up (minus expression pedal) is also a good starting point for using the Meatball as an outboard filter effect, where tweaking Intens. will have much the same effect as moving the expression pedal. The most obvious use in this case would be as a Low Pass filter (where the Intens. control will act as a regular filter cut-off), however as usual the other two modes should not be overlooked.

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