SSL Variable Harmonic Drive - Anything Like This Available?

Posted by cpsmusic on Jun 09, 2021; 5:34am
URL: http://guitar-fx-layouts.238.s1.nabble.com/SSL-Variable-Harmonic-Drive-Anything-Like-This-Available-tp50054.html

Hi Folks,

I work in audio post and have a small home studio where I do mixing and the like. I'm interested in making some sort of mild saturation/distortion device that I can use when recording or for "treating" existing recordings.

There are a few commercial products available that do this sort of thing - Silver Bullet, Neve, etc. One that I'm interested in is made by SSL and is called Variable Harmonic Drive. It's available across their hardware including 500-series units which makes me think that it's not something particularly complicated. There's some info about it here:

https://www.solidstatelogic.com/products/vhd-pre-module

As it's a commercial product there's no info available anywhere about how it works or what it is. Because it's a distortion device I'm hoping that someone here might be able to help out with ideas about how it works or even whether there is something in the realm of guitar FX that would do a similar job?

Any thoughts or suggestions welcome.

Cheers,

Chris