CharBooster

Spread the love

CharBooster is a composite overdrive effect tailored specifically to be used as booster in front of any virtual amplifier model.
It essentially consists of a pre-emphasis filter section designed to provide a variation of voicings for your instrument followed by a saturation circuit that excites the signal with harmonics while still being as transparent as possible. The UI is not trying to look like a hardware stomp box but rather has a range of meters and scopes to provide an insight on what is going on with your signal.
The effect’s controls are divided into 3 sections:
1. Character
Amount : sets the amount of the filtering applied.
Character : selects one of the pre-configured filters:

Shrill : boosts the top frequencies enhancing the presence of the signal.
Bright : boosts the high frequencies adding clarity and brightness.
Tight : rolls-off the low end to reduce the muddiness of the high-gain amps.
Flat : bypass of the filtering stage.
Fat : boosts the middle frequencies for the best high-gain tone.
Warm : rolls-off the high frequencies (good for taming single-coil pickups).

2. Saturation
Harmonics : sets the amount of the harmonics introduced by this stage.
Mode : selects the configuration of the stages:

Off : bypass the saturation stage
Tube : pre-amp stage based on a single 12AX7 triode
Tape : simple magnetic tape model
T-n-T : tube preamp followed by the tape model

The tube model used in the saturation stage is similar to the one used in Softamp 3OD, however the modeled circuit is different. The tape model is a very simplified one. It has only the nonlinear transfer curve and dynamic frequency response modeled. Wow & flutter effects as well as phase smearing were omitted keep the CPU consumption low. It is loosely based on the Ampex ATR-102 tape recorder.
3. Boost
Level : sets the output gain of the booster from -6dB to +24dB.
On the top of the effect’s window there are 5 more buttons: