Omega TWK

A lovely saturation and distortion generator pulled straight from the heart of Kush's own Tweaker hardware compressor.

Model TWK's dirt is the result of modeling the way Tweaker overdrives a long chain of 70's op­-amps, all of which have specs that, by modern standards, might be considered abysmal. But that dirty, slow sound is exactly what makes the Tweaker such a warm, charming friend to all kinds of sounds. At the heart of Tweaker's op­amp chain is another friend of distortion lovers, the 'supermatched transistor', itself a primitive and imperfect attempt to perfectly balance the push and pull of a primitive VCA.

The effect of lightly grinding each of those clipping stages before passing it along to the next is a smooth, thick, and slightly dark saturation. Because of that, Model TWK (like the Tweaker itself) goes from 'mellow & sweet' to 'angry & abrasive' a bit faster than other Omega Transformers, with their more forgiving tubes­-and-iron circuitry.

A current favorite application is the one place you might not think to use a dedicated plugin saturator: the mix buss. Put Model TWK on the 2-­mix and turn the Intensity until you barely, and rarely, see any green LED's flickering. The result is some of the smoothest, most 70's tape-­like saturation you've ever heard from a plugin.

{See video at top of page}