With a name chosen before the COVID pandemic hit humanity, London’s Intensive Care Audio intended to cure electric guitarists from life-threatening tone-related diseases. Their Vena Cava Filter is presented as “a distortion with an auto-filter and ring modulation used for the treatment of Bland Guitar Syndrome and Excessive Aural Dryness.
This unique therapeutic circuit was just updated to a smaller enclosure – not a compact one because it comes with a slew of controls (but hey, medicine is complicated!) Let’s try to summarize them:
WAVE: An 8 position rotary switch that selects from 8 available LFO waveforms: Random Slopes, Random Steps, Sweep, Sine, Triangle, Square, Ramp Down, Ramp Up.
FREQ: Sets the speed of the LFO, which is indicated by the LED above the FREQ control.
RING: Sets the base frequency of a ring modulator which is swept by the LFO along with the filter. Turned fully to the left, it disengages the ring modulator. At settings below 12 o’clock the carrier frequency becomes inaudible and provides a stuttering effect.
PEAK: Sets the depth of the LFO controlling the filter notch but also the ring modulator frequency.
RING SWITCH: It removes the LFO controlling the ring modulator frequency so the ring modulator can be set at a specific frequency. The LFO will continue to sweep the filter.
VOICE SWITCH: Selects between two voicings for the filter: a narrower one with emphasis on high-frequency content, and a wider one.
VOLUME: Goes without saying
GAIN: Sets the gain of the distortion
BLEND: Sets the mix between distortion and effected signal.
If all this sounds confusing, you may want to just check out the videos below and get an idea of what you can do with the Intensive Care Audio Vena Cava Filter.
1. What VENA CAVA FILTER is, and what is it used for:
The VENA CAVA FILTER is a distortion with an auto-filter and ring modulation used for the treatment of Bland Guitar Syndrome and Excessive Aural Dryness. Used regularly it can provide effective relief from these, and other music and instrumentation related conditions.
All Intensive Care Audio pedals are built in London,
England, using high quality components and featuring soft touch, relay based trued bypass. There are two soft touch footswitches, the left is BYPASS and the right is TAP TEMPO
The VENA CAVA FILTER features 8 controls, there are therefore a range of available remedies.
WAVE FUNCTION: An 8 position rotary switch allows you to select 1 of 8 available LFO waveforms. From left to right these are;
Random Slopes, Random Steps, Sweep, Sine, Triangle, Square, Ramp Down, Ramp Up.
FREQ: Sets the frequency (speed) of the LFO. The speed (and waveform) of the LFO is indicated by the LED above the FREQ control.
RING: Sets the base frequency of a ring modulator which is swept by the LFO along with the filter. Turning fully clockwise disengages the ring modulator. At settings below 12 o’clock the carrier frequency becomes inaudible and provides an interesting stuttering effect. Set correctly it can also create octave down effects which
when swept by the LFO moves around with the wave shape set by WAVE FUNCTION.
RING SWITCH: This switch removes the LFO controlling the ring modulator frequency so the ring modulator can be set at a specific frequency. The LFO will continue to sweep the filter.
VOICE SWITCH: Selects between two voicing options for the filter. One is a narrower notch with emphasis on high frequency content.
VOLUME: Sets the overall output volume of the effect.
PEAK: Sets the depth of the LFO controlling the filter notch and the ring modulator frequency.
BLEND: Sets the mix between distortion (fully anti-clockwise) and filtered and ring modulated distortion (fully anti-clockwise). Use in conjunction with the PEAK control to set intensity of the overall filter effect.
GAIN: Sets the gain of the distortion. It ranges from a very mild overdrive to a heavy, fat distortion. At lower gain settings the filtering effect becomes less pronounced.
2. What you need to know before using the VENA CAVA FILTER:
Do not use:
-If you are allergic to unorthodox sounds
-If you have high levels of normality in your blood
-If you have the habit of accidentally plugging in the wrong power supply (Use only high quality 9v centre negative power supplies)
-If you play with aggressive or temperamental drummers.
How to take the VENA CAVA FILTER:
The dose needed to treat guitar effect deficiency will depend on how low your levels of guitar effect are. Your doctor will advise you on
the length of time to use the VENA CAVA FILTER.
For adults this is usually 1-2 hours, twice a day. Using pedals after meals is recommended to avoid dizziness.
If you forget to use the VENA CAVA FILTER, use it as soon as possible and continue to use it as normal.
DO NOT take a double dose to make up for a forgotten dose as this can cause irreversible MIND BENDING (Mindbendinitis)
3. Possible Side Effects:
Like all medicine, this medicine can cause side effects, although not everybody gets them.
Serious side effects:
-Involuntary time signature changes
-Nausea and or vomiting
-Anxiety
-Difficulty passing riffs
-Thinking you are better at your instrument than you actually are
-Looking down your nose at other peoples gear
Supply using only 9v centre negative supply.
Current Draw: 65mA
