Glitch Witch

CMOS FUZZ

At the dawn of civilization, vulnerable hominid primates devised tools! Fire! Language! Machines! Each technology unleashed powerful new possibilities, some of which were intended, but many of which were not…

When the humble CMOS logic gate was first forged from crystalline silicon, nobody imagined that these seemingly simple analog devices could be harnessed to create unimaginable sonic chaos. Proceed with caution… or, don’t. Actually, go ballistic and have some fun!

The Glitch Witch subsonic logic fuzz is your retro-futurist companion for exploring the sonically aberrant boundaries between order and chaos, pitch and rhythm.

At the robotic heart of this 100% analog pedal is a fast, fun, and heavy AF CMOS fuzz. Its all-original and unconventional circuit can achieve massive, modern, full-spectrum gated fuzz, yet can also harken back to the roar, grind and grit of an under-biased MKII Tone Bender. The real frenzy ensues when frequency dividers are integrated into the fuzz engine, producing a matrix of musical possibilities, including sub-octave, bit crush, harmonic glitch, ring modulation, pulse, strobe and chop effects.

When the frequency dividers are active, all rhythmic effects and modulation rates are locked to subsonic divisions of the notes and pitches of the input source. A high pitched note will be modulated more quickly and a low note more slowly. In this way, Glitch Witch evokes the “Rhythmicon” concept, devised by Leon Theremin and Henry Cowell in the 1930s, which illuminates the fluid gradient within the phenomenon we humans perceive distinctly as pitch and rhythm.

The purity of logic and mathematics will fuse with the chaos of nature as they are together heated by overwhelming amounts of gain to form a searing singularity of sound! The result is as aggressive as it is delightful, as intuitive as it is surprising.

…it’s everything but subtle!

GATE controls the amount of signal gating, or conversely the amount of sustain. Turn it up for more gating, spitty  splatty chiptunes chirps, and beyond that strangled glitches and eventually… silence. Turn GATE down for massive sustain and walls of noise.

LEVEL sets the volume of the effect voice. 

HI & LO are a two-band EQ that control the amount of 
high and low frequencies. For each band: 
•Left: Cut 
•Center: Balanced 
•Right: Boosted 

With both toggles in their center positions they form a warm, balanced, slightly mid focused fuzz. When both are boosted they create a massive full-spectrum slightly scooped voice. When both are cut you have a sharply mid focused lo-fi radio voice. Or try asymmetrical combinations for searing highs, booming lows, or anything in between.

CLEAN controls the output volume of the parallel clean path, and is unaffected by all other controls. Great for maintaining clarity through the madness, or for bass and electronic instruments.

BYPASS is a relay-based smart-switching true bypass. Tap to toggle the effect on or off, or hold the switch down to momentarily change the pedal’s state. 

DIVIDE is a stomp switch that toggles Glitch Witch’s frequency divider mode. Just like

BYPASS it is a relay based smart-switching system that will latch when tapped and momentarily switch when held. This is great for adding short bursts of sub octave glitch or staccato chop insanity. The red DIVIDE LED will remain lit when DIVIDE mode is active — even when the effect is bypassed — to indicate which mode the pedal will be in when re
engaged. 

VOICE selects between 3 flavors of frequency divided effects.

•Left - “Chop”: AM synthesis, ring modulation and 
tremolo are all terms that mean the same basic thing! 
The volume of the signal is modulated for glitchy sub
octave, psychedelic strobing or rhythmic chop effects.
 
•Center - “Pulse”: Primitive frequency modulation 
fluctuates between octaves for searing stacked octave 
fuzzes or thrumming EDM pulses. 

•Right - “Unstable”: Adds spectral content to confuse the 
pitch tracking, leading to higher rates of pitch errors, 
erratic harmonic trills and edgy splatty broken sounds. 
DIVISOR selects how many times the input frequency will 
be divided. Divide by 2 (one octave down), 4 (two octaves 
down), 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, all the way up to 256 (eight 
octaves down). Sound waves slower than 20 cycles per 
second (approximately 2 octaves below a guitar’s low E) 
are perceived by the human brain as rhythmic beats 
instead of pitch. So depending on the pitch being played, 
higher DIVISORs will quickly push below audio rate into 
subsonic rhythmic modulation. 

DEPTH sets the overall amount of DIVIDER modulation. 
All the way left for the unmodified fuzz voice, all the way 
right for the most intense divider modulation effect.