Cuatro Puertoriqueno
A handmade Puertorican folk Cuatro
Bymatrix12x
The story
Inspired by the Spitfire Audio LABS Charango instrument, I decided to sample a Cuatro Puertoriqueno that I had built form scratch. The Cuatro was made from Spanish cedar for the body and Yagrumo for the soundboard. The Cuatro is a Puertorican instrument that is often used in Puertorican folk (jabaro) as well as Christmas music.
Each note was recorded using a Rode NT2 large capsule microphone through a Joe Meek VC6Q preamp. For the pluck instrument I added some EQ and compression as well as a small amount of Supermassive reverb. I played/recorded the notes twice with a medium pick and setup a round-robin in the EXS24. Of note, I played a B that seemed to modulate weirdly, and I kind of liked how human it sounded when added to the round robin. I also made a pad using the Cuatro samples as source material and adding some reverb, modulation, and delay to fill it out as a pad with some motion.
Reviews
Hidden gem!
This instrument blew me away! I started with the PR patch and it reminded me a bit of Spitfire's Swarm. Its a cool sound, but I thought I wouldn't use it for a wide range of purposes... Then I loaded up the Puertoriqueno patch and wow! This is a unique ethnic instrument that I want to use on my next project that needs any type of guitar/plucked solo string.
Inspirational and one-of-a-kind...
Much better than many string libraries, I really enjoyed using this instrument. The pad sounds are my favorite and have a nice evolution with some really cool textures. The pluck preset is not as realistic, but is generally pretty good. Great work!
Plucking hell its good!
Both the Pluck and the pad patches are amazing. The 'note off' releases on the pluck patch are very distracting and sound unrealistic to a typical note release on a strung instrument. But turn them off and this thing sounds amazing! Great work!