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Champagne SuperNova Vintage Synthsizer

A unique and eerie polyphonic synthesizer … from the 1930s! A legendary soundtrack machine: The Novachord
Champagne SuperNova (Front FX View) - Novachord
Developed in the late 1930s by the Hammond Organ company, the Novachord was an instrument that, despite using a vacuum tube oscillator and divide-down circuits, was perhaps forty years ahead of its time. Many of the Novachord’s features would not be seen again until the mid to late 60s, or even into the 80s!
It provided not only a level of polyphony that synthesizers of today can’t reach (72!) but also featured Attack/Delay/Release and Attack/Hold/Release envelopes (with a Release stage separately adjustable for lower and higher keyboard range, allowing the upper range to be nice and lush with a long release, while preventing lower notes making everything too muddy by setting those to a separate, shorter release), six slightly rate-offset LFOs controlling vibrato to note pairs, and five mixers controlling tone from parallel filters: a high pass, a low pass, and three formant bandpass resonators. An additional control mixed the unfiltered tone. Finally an additional low pass filter could adjust overall brightness. According to one piece of research, a prototype even featured velocity!
While the Novachord had unstable pitching and was generally erratic and noisy, the result produced wonderfully strange strings and eerie synth choirs. In Champagne SuperNova we capture some of that vintage analogue charm and warmth in a unique software product.

Product Details

Taking a different approach to the original Novachord ReFill, the Champagne SuperNova Rack Extension instead uses newly created and clean waveforms inspired by the Novachord, to create a device that in keeping with the spirit of the original, both in design and in creating a very 1940s/50s synthesizer soundtrack tone, while being a little more flexible in terms of being able to dial back the noise and instability and adjust the tone during or post performance when required, which preset samples can’t do particularly well. This is not, then, a strict emulation of the Novachord, so much as a stylistic reinterpretation based on its design ethos. Enjoy its cosy and vintage tone, and unlike the real thing, on starting it up, it is immediately playable: you won’t need to wait for those vacuum tubes to warm up!

Features include:

  • Fifteen waveforms
  • Authentic Novachord audio flow: five parallel filters (low pass, high pass and three resonant bandpass) and full tone, and the extra “Bright-Mellow” serial low pass filter, and tube amp
  • Six rate-offset LFOs in consecutive note pairs for a richer vibrato
  • Original 7-mode ADR/AHR envelope, with keyboard split Release adjustment
  • Original stepped knobs, plus a continuous pots mode with fine level control and modern ADSR envelope
  • Flexible level control of hum and noise to age/de-age the tone as required
  • Choice of Direct or miked Cabinet output, with or without FX pedalboard
  • Velocity control!
  • Hidden extras for fine tuning
  • Over 100 presets
  • 3D-modelled GUI

Updates

1.1.0

Additions

  • External Audio can now be input into parallel Resonators/Tone filters, Cabinet and FX
  • New page of Extras – “Vacuum Tubes”. Drive and Level of tube distortion can be applied to individual Resonators and the Deep and Brilliant tones
 

Fixes

  • Surge limiter is now set to “Soft”, not “Clip”, to prevent unwanted extra distortion

Media

Audio

Video

Testimonials

Liking this a lot. Getting some fantastic sounding pads out of it ... Ganja Phlanja FTW!
Reason
nickb523
Composer
In addition to sounding great, it's an extremely fun synth to explore and experiment with. If you like unique synths that will lead you to new places, this is fantastic and well worth looking into!
Reason
esselfortium
Composer
Another neat RE from JP. This is right up my street. But the patch names. By the time I'm finished laughing at the obscure references, I've forgotten what I was doing.
Reason
PSoames
Composer
This is the most JP instrument yet: Obscure, weird, and awesome.
Reason
fieldframe
Composer

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