New Effect Emulates The Diffusers Of Maurice Martenot

Swiss thereminist Coralie Ehinger (aka Therminal C) shared this theremin demo of the les diffYUseurs – a device that emulates the sound & effect of the diffusers (loudspeakers) created by Maurice Martenot for the Ondes Martenot.

The effect was designed by Yves Usson, aka Yusynth.

Here’s what Ehinger has to say about the unique effect:

I have been testing a prototype Yves sent me with my theremin. Yves did add some additional effects to this pedal – i am only showing a few in the video:

D1 – principal diffuser

D2 – resonance diffuser

D3 – metallic diffuser

D4 – Palme diffuser

Ring modulator

Tremolo & reverb Bell

Additional effects are: chorus, flanger, pitch shift, pitch echo, transpose, a second palme diffuser, a second metallic diffuser.

A few other people also got a diffYUseurs and after our feedback, Yves will make some adjustments and offer a totally “theremin friendly” diffYUseurs.

les diffYUseurs will be available at the next Theremin Academy in Lausanne in February 2019.

7 thoughts on “New Effect Emulates The Diffusers Of Maurice Martenot

  1. Since this is Yves Usson we’re talking about here, is there going to be source-code and schematics released for this?

    I’ve heard this personally – sounds interesting, even if it’s a “bit digital sounding” – but it does use a cheap DSP chip.

  2. I think it sounds great.
    I have no idea what people mean when they say something sounds “digital”. Or why that even matters. You either like the sound or not. Analog digital, I don’t care. Besides, how much would it cost to round up functional versions of the original effects? Maintain them? Sorry, this is where chips come in real handy. I have a tape echo pedal that sounds very much like a real tape echo. All of the fun and none of the suffering of cleaning heads, replacing tape, tubes, etc.

    I can’t wait to run my signal generators through one of these things. Where do I sign up for one?

  3. Hello

    I am Yves Usson and for those wondering about the availability of this effect here are some information and answers.
    First I developed this effect box for my own purpose, I own “Ondes Martenot” but I miss the real diffusers, therefore I decided (back in 2010) to try and build an electronic device that would emulate the D3 and D4 diffuseurs (Metallique and Palme). The famous Ondist Thomas Bloch was the first artist to benefit from this effectin 2011. Later in 2017 I met Christine Ott (a famous French Ondist) and made a box for her. From there
    I started to show it to the community of Thereminist at the “/N/O/D/E Rendez-vous ” festival organized by Coralie Ehinger in Lausanne. There the people were very fond of my little box and I decided to build a very small series of this box for some selected friends including Coralie. Since the publication of videos, I have received a lot of demands, therefore I am currently discussing with a company that would built and sell it. I hope it will be commercially available in 2019.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *