I have a Black Finger. Great pedal.
Here’s my question. Does anyone know if the lamp setting uses an incandescent lamp or an electro-luminescent lamp?
The reason I’m asking is I think the documentation might have it mixed up. The Black Finger manual says something about less compression on the highs but I think I’m actually hearing more compression on the highs, and a nice thump on the lows. It sounds to me just like the description of the electro-luminescent lamp in the NY-2a documentation (https://www.ehx.com/assets/instructions/ny-2a.pdf). The presence of the normal/sqsh switch also supports the idea of it being the electro-luminescent and not the incandescent. Additionally, the NY-2a manual says it sounds great for blaring electric guitar, which it does.
Quote:
Finally, the Electro-luminescent
panel optocoupler has an interesting frequency dependent characteristic. EL lamps change color with
frequency. Photocells have a range of sensitivity but most chemistries peak in either the red/yellow
range or in the blue/ultraviolet. Most EL lamps go from yellow green at low frequencies (30 – 60 Hz)
to blue (300 – 600 Hz) to purple (2 to 20 KHz). Additionally, EL lamps produce less light at low
frequencies, more in the middle, and most at the top until the capacitance of the lamp lowers the
impedance to a short circuit somewhere around 80KHZ. The right choice of lamp, together with a
spectrum sensitive photocell, will create a natural “de-essing” circuit that compresses high frequencies
more than low. This is excellent for vocals and for loud blaring electric guitar. The EL opto-coupler in
the NY-2A has 2 settings: normal, which is generally flat except for a small bump in the bass, and
squash, which compresses the top more.
