The Italian folks at TEFI Vintage Lab have been releasing some increasingly interesting pedals and the Golden Era Real-Time Lo-Fi Machine seems like an extra step in the right direction.
In a world where the increasingly pristine quality of digital recording makes many audiophiles long for the artifacts of old-time analog formats such as tape and vinyl, lo-fi effects have become an important niche for musicians looking to add character to their sounds.
The Golden Era, developed in conjunction with James Edward Bagshaw of British psych revival band Temples, puts at your fingertips a sonic time machine built to send your tone back in time to the days of gramophones, phonographs compact cassettes and even the rather obscure MicroCassettes.
All those devices presented their own artifacts, or sonic imperfection from vinyl warp and pops, to low bandwidth (aka phone-like nasal sound) to hiss to flutter (aka tape wabble). Humanity learned to put up with them at the time but suddenly started missing soon after digital recordings took over. If you are nostalgic about them, the Golden Era is the right pedal for you, since it was created to faithfully reproduce the “non-fidelity” of these audio recorders.
Bonus fact: it does a great job on any recorded instrument.
Check out the video of the TEFI Vintage Lab Golden Era by Demos in the Dark.
Overview
1876: Thomas Alva Edison presents the first phonograph on wax cylinder. 1887: Emile Berliner presents the gramophone on shellac disk. 1963: Philips introduces the Compact Cassette which, together with the 1969 MicroCassette, made it universally easy to capture sound events with a miniaturized, lightweight device. It took decades of research before every analog medium achieved excellent audio performance. Before then, every audio recorder had some peculiarities that marked an era: from the “mechanical” response full of noise and scratch of the first phonographs, to the low bandwidth available and with a nasal and floating voice of Compact Cassettes, especially if recorded / listened by cheap or worn devices. Golden Era was created to faithfully reproduce the “non fidelity” of these audio recorders at the time of their introduction, taking you to other eras of analog audio recording: the Golden Eras.
Features
The TEFI Vintage Lab Golden Era was born from an idea of ??James Edward Bagshaw, bandleader of Temples, transformed into reality by TEFI vintage lab. James always loved the character of vintage recordings and dreamt of a pedal that could create this in real time. The Golden Era pedal morphs sound into a bygone era; an era of analogue recording, where unintentional peculiarities and imperfect machines created mesmerising, unique sound palettes. The Golden Era will turn any sound coming from a guitar, synthesizer or modern recording in a analog-voiced record. Press the footswitch and enjoy your journey through the ages.
