Thermionic Culture Vulture: add harmonic distortion to your music

Today we present the Thermionic Culture Vulture, a two-channel unit for adding harmonic distortion to a variety of input sources. By adjusting the current passing through and configuring the distortion tube (6AS6), three types of distortion with infinite variations can be achieved.

It can gently give warmth to a sound or create distortion similar to that of a guitar head. Although the unit can sound "clean" (less than 0.2 percent THD), a tube-like distortion nonetheless can be quite desirable, enhancing naturalness and smoothing out unwanted digital peaks.

Technical specifications of the Thermionic Culture Vulture

The Thermionic Culture Vulture has an input gain control called DRIVE and an output control called OUTPUT LEVEL. The latter will behave cleanly up to about 8/9 while beyond that it will give a warmer, rounder color to the sound.

We can choose 3 distortion settings going from T with a triad type tube, to P1 with a Pentode type tube, to P2, which is still a Pentode but will have a more aggressive behavior in some settings of the BIAS knob.

BIAS is a fundamental control, because together with DRIVE it will allow us to determine the amount of current we want to send to the tubes. In fact, the two VU meters will not show input or output but the amperage in mA to which the valve is subjected.

A high BIAS will result in a lower current and thus a cleaner sound while a lower BIAS will result in higher current distorting more. The bypass is a "hard" type so it directly connects the input to the output. We still have low-pass filters at 9 or 6 kHz that are useful if we want to avoid too much fizzy distortion and round it out.

Audio Test Result and Practical Use

In our YouTube video you can hear how the Culture Vulture behaves on different sound sources. From the harmonic response point of view, we can see how, by activating the machine, you immediately have to graph even harmonics in Triad setting or odd harmonics in Pentode setting even at zero DRIVE and BIAS.

Playing with the DRIVE, BIAS and Output controls shows how the response can vary continuously, really allowing for interesting facets of harmonic distortions. The Thermionic Culture Vulture also features an input on the front panel, which is useful for directly connecting musical instruments for DI recording, so you can use the machine as if it were a guitar or bass amp. In addition, thanks to the additional switch called OVERDRIVE, we can increase the input stage by as much as 20 db achieving very high distortion.

The Thermionic Culture Vulture is therefore an excellent machine to saturate your mixes making everything rounder when mastering. Obviously, with lighter settings, smoothing out the peaks perhaps with a Triode setting which comes out cleaner. Great for creative saturations and to magnify drums perhaps with parallel use.

In conclusion, we just have to invite you to Milk Audio Store and the Showroom to try the Vulture directly!