[GUITAR PLAYING]
Hey, I'm Stan, with Fender, and we're here with the funky,
Josh Smith today.
[LAUGHTER]
We're looking at the Pour Over Envelope Filter.
For those of you that don't know what an envelope filter is,
maybe we can explain it a little bit.
An envelope filter starts with a filter.
And what filter does is, it filters out
some part of the audio signal.
So it might get rid of lows, or it might get rid
of high frequencies.
This filter actually has three different types.
So there's a low pass, a band pass, and a high pass.
The low pass filter passes lows.
So it filters out high frequencies.
The band pass only passes stuff that it's tuned to.
That's more like a wah pedal.
And then the high pass filter progressively gets
rid of more and more lows and just leaves you
with the tiny thin high end part.
So all three filter types.
So that's the filter part of it.
The envelope part of it is, the pedal
can listen to your playing dynamics,
and as you're picking--
and it can drive the filter frequency around.
And in the case of this envelope filter, it can drive it
either upwards or downwards as you play.
So when you play harder, it'll push the filter frequency
farther out.
Play softer, it'll just make little subtle moves.
All right, so an envelope filter
is such an effective and useful pedal for so many situations.
I mean, everybody uses a wah wah pedal.
Some guys are familiar with the auto wah.
And an envelope filter takes that filtered signal
and adds peaks and valleys to it based on how you pick
and how you react.
And that's how you get all those classic synth sounds--
but also, all those cocked wah sounds.
And like you were saying with the distortion, anything
you put into it, gives it more information to react.
So all those-- when you listen even to old Funk records,
when they're playing moog synthesizers through them,
they're getting all those crazy peaks and valleys.
So let's look through the actual features of the pedal.
So starting on the right hand side,
there's the filter section over here.
The knobs for that are-- there's a frequency control,
there's a q control-- the q controls the sharpness
of the filter, or how obvious or apparent it is--
and then there's the drive control
for the envelope portion of it.
Next to the drive control there's
a switch that determines whether the drive pushes the filter up
or down as you're playing harder.
And the next to that, is the filter shape.
So it's high pass on the top, band
passing in the middle, low pass on the bottom.
So that's the filter section.
On the left side of the pedal, is the distortion section.
So there's a drive control, there's a tone control,
there's a bypass toggle switch so you
can have the pedal be clean or dirty,
and then lastly, on this side, there's
a level control, which is overall level
for the whole pedal.
It's true bypass.
It's all analog.
And so there's the bypass foot switch, of course.
And then lastly, like all the pedals in the series,
it's got illuminated knobs.
And there's a switch on the back to turn the illumination on
or off.
Let's get into the sounds, but before we do,
let's check out the clean tone.
Josh, what are you playing?
I'm playing a Vintera 60s Tele Modified through a 68 Custom
Deluxe Reverb.
STAN COTEY: Awesome.
[GUITAR PLAYING]
OK, the opening sound we had, we can walk through that.
That's using the low pass setting.
And it's driving the filter upward.
And the q's set just above half.
And the distortion circuit's off.
[GUITAR PLAYING]
You can't not move your head when that happens.
So, you could hear when Josh was digging in more,
the filter would get brighter.
And when he'd play quite to a little more muted,
it's great for a combination of like rhythm and lead playing.
Absolutely, well, so many of those guys--
those Funk guitar players, they were the only guitar player
in the band.
And they were always constantly shifting
between little fills and a part that never stopped.
But in between that part, the little fills would pop out.
Yeah, it's cool.
It's like somebody riding a fader for you,
and they're pushing it up when you need it.
Let's go look at the other side of it.
Let's go-- I'm going to turn the drive off.
And I'm going to switch and just kind of sweep
through the filters while Josh plays.
So you can hear what each one of them sounds like.
So here's the low pass.
[GUITAR PLAYING]
So that's the high pass filter.
And the high pass filter is fun.
If you start with a really tiny sound,
and then you set to drive to drive downwards,
it gets this really cool attacks kind of sound.
[GUITAR PLAYING]
Awesome.
All right, let's go look at the distortion part of it.
So I'm going to go back to the low pass setting.
I'm going to drive upward, kick the distortion on,
and Josh is going to play.
[LAUGHTER]
[GUITAR PLAYING]
So more synthy kinds of sounds.
Absolutely, yes.
Especially if I would have gone to the neck and the bridge
and series for the more humbuckery sounds.
[GUITAR PLAYING]
So also kind of fun on this pedal,
if you get rid of the envelope part of it, and just deal
with the filter, you can do some pretty fun things.
Like, if you use a high pass filter,
you can make it be the world's tiniest distortion.
[GUITAR PLAYING]
Where it's almost like you're playing through a two inch
speaker or something.
Yeah, it's like the little cigarette amps.
Yeah, and then, similarly, you can
get fairly monstrous sounds.
If you play, I'm going to add some resonance
to the high pass.
And I'm going to sweep the filter down.
And at some point, the low end is just going to explode.
[GUITAR PLAYING]
So really big beefy distortion tones.
So lastly, let's look at the band pass filter.
Band pass filters are more like the circuit in a wah pedal.
So this gets you into kind of classic jam band territory.
Absolutely.
[GUITAR PLAYING]
So you could hear, I switched the drive up and down
a little bit.
[GUITAR PLAYING]
So that's a look at the Pour Over Envelope Filter
from Fender.
I want to thank Josh Smith for stopping by and playing.
Thank you, cool.
STAN COTEY: The Poor Over's a great, super versatile envelope
filter with distorted sounds and clean sounds, very kind
of jam band territory, kind of synth territory,
just lots of flexibility.
For more information on the Pour Over,
as well as the full line of Fender pedals,
head on over to fender.com.
Josh, do you want to play us out?
Absolutely.
[GUITAR PLAYING]