Thermionic Culture THE CULTURE VULTURE Mastering Plus - Manual (Page 4)

©Thermionic Culture Ltd, 2010-2014 3
1 Introduction
The Culture Vulture is the first and only all valve unit, dedicated
to producing the best harmonic distortion money can buy.
It can ‘warm’ a sound gently, or create a noise like a 200 watt
guitar stack overdriven with all speakers slashed.
The Culture Vulture is a two channel unit for adding harmonic
distortion to a variety of input sources. By biasing and
configuring the distortion valve (5725), four types of distortion
with infinite variations can be achieved.
Although the unit can be ‘clean’ (less than 0.2% THD), added
valve distortion may be quite desirable, improving naturality and
smoothing off unwanted digital spikes. But The Culture Vulture
can be used for effects! Push it and try it!.
The user has total control over the type and amount of
distortion, which can be changed from even to odd harmonics or
a combination of both. Starved, the sound from The Vulture
becomes thin and loses its body, overfed, it becomes fatter and
more rounded.
The Culture Vulture features two channels which can be used
independently on individual tracks, or put across a whole stereo
mix.
The CULTURE VULTURE MASTERING was developed for
mastering engineers to add subtle distortion to a mix or pair of
tracks for “warming up” the sound. The Mastering + Culture
Vulture is designed to provide accurate recallable facility plus
the ability for even more extreme distortion, so that it can be
used in all applications where valve distortion is required.
We have used a Mullard M8100 input valve to achieve very low
noise. The extra “drive” position gives some of the bite of
“overdrive” but with far less noise. The extra control over output
level with the (-10db) switch allows the unit to be driven into
extreme distortion but still have a respectable stereo balance.
However the “P2” and “P3” positions will become so extreme
that true stereo won’t always be applicable.