On a real D6, there are six rocker switches. Two determine which of pickups you hear (the one above the strings, the one below, both, or both out of phase); the other four are filters that pass different frequency ranges, and are labeled Brilliant, Treble, Medium, and Soft. EVD6 replicates the exact effect of these switches on the Clav’s tone, with one exception: On the real thing, you’ll hear silence if all four filters are in the up (off) position. In EVD6, you’ll hear the sound of the virtual strings with no filtering. Really, this much control is all you need to nail any Clav sound you can think of, from the obligatory “Superstition” to Bob Marley’s “Could You Be Loved?” to Billy Preston’s “Outa-Space.” But EVD6 goes a lot deeper, with tons of parameters that let you determine virtually everything about the behavior and physical condition of every component of a virtual Clav, from the hammer tips to the strings to the pickups (see “Inside the Clav” on page 27). You can even move the pickups around inside the instrument, something you can’t do on the real thing.
There’s a cliché about how most humans only use a fraction of their brainpower; likewise, only fractions of the ranges of most of EVD6’s parameters are needed for making actual Clav sounds. Stray outside those ranges, and EVD6 becomes a heady plucked-string modeler in Clav’s clothing, something the factory presets make no bones about showing off. That’s great for sound designers, but if I were a newbie in search of the funk, I’d stick to the basic D6 preset bank and experiment with the effects, which include wah, distortion, and modulation (phaser, flanger, and chorus). While they’re all tasty, it’s the wah that takes EVD6 to even higher ground. You can control it with a sweep pedal or use the envelope knob to make it follow your fingers, and it does visceral, gritty renderings of classic wah pedals, including the Crybaby and two Morleys.
INSTRUMENTS
Hohner Clavinet D6.
PREVIOUSLY REVIEWED
Mar. ’03.
PLUG-IN FORMATS
Apple Logic.
PROS
Ultra-realistic Clav sound. So tweakable you can model any Clav that ever existed, as well as other string instruments and exotic string-based sounds.
CONS
So tweakable that it’s easy to wander far away from a recognizable Clav sound by accident.
BOTTOM LINE
Non-Logic users should still have Clav envy — EVD6 is still the most ambitious and thorough Clavinet emulation around.