W.E.P.

Wurlitzer 200A Electric Piano sampled by Scarbee

Reviewed by David Mondrup .

Available in a 16 bit GIGA edition and a combined 24 bit Kontakt/EXS24mkII/Halion edition.
Additional info and ordering: www.scarbee.com

Test equipment:
2.2 ghz AMD athlon/1024 mb ram/separate Seagate Barracuda 60 gb 7200 rpm HD for audio/RME HDSP9652 audio interface/emagic MT4 MIDI interface. Running Logic Platinum 5.5.1 and EXS24mkII on windows XP home.

Controller: Kurzweil PC88mx

W.E.P.:

What's on the disc?
Included are 5 different instrument presets, all relying on the same set of samples, consisting of 1.5 gb. The major version of these has every key sampled at 16 different velocities, which makes use of the whole load of samples, but also taxes your CPU, RAM and HD the hardest. For lighter wear, there are 4 versions with only the white keys sampled and stretched to fill the whole keyboard, equipped with 4, 8, 12 & 16 velocity layers respectively. A nice way to meet the fact that not all computers out in the wild are up to the job when it comes to heavy HD streaming; or, even if your computer easily outruns anything found in the depths of the NASA headquarters, you might still prefer to use the lite versions while building the song, leaving some CPU headroom for the other tracks. Then, when you're done, you could always substitute the light versions for the full 1.5 gb 16V version. The lite versions also feature release samples, and, honestly, even the litest of them still sound great and can easily be used to do very realistic wurlitzer parts.

Features of the W.E.P.
The W.E.P. claims to be "the most accurately sampled Wurlitzer electric piano on planet earth!". I have no idea whether that claim holds water, but it is certainly accurate enough to make the specs satisfy me. All keys have been sampled at 16 different velocities of note-on, and the release of all keys has also been sampled for 16 velocities, except for the top 5 keys, which are damperless on the original Wurlitzer and therefore don't need release samples. After all, the sound that is heard when letting go of the key is primarily the damper hitting the reed.

The Original Wurlitzer sampled here was prepared to deliver the most noisefree performance possible. This, for instance, means that the power transformer has been relocated to outside the actual piano; the goal clearly to make a Wurlitzer with an as clean as possible sound. And, it's mission accomplished; the sound is indeed very clean.

Speaking dynamics
A main characteristic of the Wurlitzer is the dynamic response. There's a huge difference to the sound depending on how hard you play it, and this goes for the entire keyboard range. Uniformly, when playing the keys softly, you'll get a very soft and subtle sound, while playing hard will produce a twanging, almost phaser-like sound - less so on the top keys than in the bass, but still very present. This has been met by reproducing the instrument with no less than 16 velocity layers, as mentioned, thus making room for all timbral changes that occur along the velocity scale in a real Wurlitzer. As one who likes to play the Wurli quite softly, I would have liked more emphasis on the soft velocities, giving a little extra manouvring space for the soft sounds. However, the thing you get here is a reproduction of a Wurlitzer as they came right out of the factory, and not as torn & worn as most of them are by now. Thomas told me, as we discussed this, that the mellow sound that some of us experience when playing Wurlitzers today is actually a symptom of a much worn instrument - a brand new one (or in this case, one that has been undergoing 2 months of restoration) will feature a much harder sound, even when playing the keys relatively lightly. To hear how the dynamics work in the W.E.P., take a listen to me improvising a bit over a few chord progressions:

W.E.P. chord progessions (mp3)

Still very nice and dynamic.

The hards
This part reproduces the characterstics of the original, the almost flanging, slightly distorted sound of a Wurli being thumped hard to a degree where I at times had myself wondering if I accidentally left some modulating plugin on somewhere in the chain. But no; this is the actual sound of the instrument as we know it, with all it's dirt right there in your face. Have a listen to this rocking blues chorus for a demonstration:

W.E.P. blues (mp3)

The softs
The softs in a Wurlitzer are really soft. They range from almost disappearing to soft intimacy, unrivaled by almost any instrument, which is also what makes the Wurlitzer my favourite vintage keyboard by far. What with the emphasis in this instrument being laid on reproducing a Wurlitzer with new or wellpreserved reeds, giving the velocity response of the original Wurlitzer as they used to be when they were generally still maintained, reproducing the full range of Wurlitzer soft sounds with the W.E.P. is possible, but difficult if played as installed right out of the box. I did have a little trouble doing this, and to a certain point I thought that it couldn't be done, but then I started investigating a little and tweaked around a bit with the EXS24 velocity curve, which gave me control of the instrument much more to my taste, revealing the full range of soft sounds. Listen to this short vamp to hear it:

W.E.P. soft (mp3)

An interesting fact: when hearing soft Wurlitzers on albums, they are often dubbed by a barely audible Rhodes track. As the Rhodes has a quite different velocity response, it's much easier to play softly on that instrument, thus adding extra expression to the Wurlitzer.

Playing around
As the Wurlitzer has that characteristic sound that at times almost makes you think it's processed as it comes from the source itself, it makes a good starting point for doing more synthesized stuff, and with a softsampler you have every opportunity to do so. Some instruments are just better at this than others.
Here I played a little with the amp attack and the filter cutoff envelope, and made filter resonance controlled by velocity on that same piece as before:

W.E.P. soft synthesized (mp3)

Nice, eh?

Release samples
Like the R.S.P.'73, the W.E.P. features release samples in the same aboundance that the sustained samples come in. Every key release is sampled at 16 different velocities. This makes for an extremely realistic playing experience, and also adds that extra touch to the sound of it. Hearing the damper fall on the reed is a big part of the Wurlitzer experience.

Since I'm working in logic, it would be almost unforgiveable if I didn't drag this sample library through the ultimate Wurlitzer-test; at the same time this will do nicely to demonstrate the release samples, if you listen hard enough (after all, the main feature of a patch like this one should be the note on's, not note off's).

W.E.P. logical (mp3)

- if this doesn't make your mind say "Supertramp" right away, you were either born in the wrong century or Scarbee's work was in vain.

Cons:
- The documentation is in html format only; an extra service could be a couple of extra formats, like pdf and rtl.
- As mentioned, this reviewer would like a little more attention given to the soft velocities. Then again, Scarbee's objective here has been to do an almost scientifically accurate reproduction of the original Wurlitzer, preserving the action of it as it came from the shop back when brand new Wurli's were at sale. With this in mind, there can only be one right result, and this is what Scarbee achieved here. My best advice if this leaves you in doubt about whether to get this or not is to listen to the demos above here and check if this contains the sounds you want.

Pros:
- Even with that one small difference in preferences, I still have to say that the sound of this is just superb. I'd be hard pressed to not believe that this is an actual Wurlitzer when listening to it, and if you close your eyes you can almost imagine too that a Wurlitzer is indeed what you're playing. Playing with headphones you almost get the image that you've plugged the jack coming from the Wurli straight into the back of your head. It comes down to the extreme close sound that a well prepared and noiseless sampler instrument can provide, but certainly also to the realism of it. It is a joy to play.