There are a LOT of pedals that can make you sound like an old record, tape machine or bitcrushed answering machine. A lot. Some have a wall of switches and options. Some cost as much as a guitar or two.
Only a handful, however, appear repeatedly on both studio and gigging musicians' boards. Even fewer remain there for years. Fewer still for decades.
This is one has.
But why?!
Well when Joel (Chase Bliss) took on his boss's challenge (Zachary Vex of ZVex) to create a circuit that did in realtime what the old sagging looper chip in the Lo-Fi Loop Junky did he must've scratched his not inconsiderable noggin and wondered what he could bring to the party.
The answer is a sweet-spot cocktail of:
- frequency shelving and modulation massaging that just pours warm, buttery smelted audio chocolate all over your crispy cracker playing and then caramalises it. It's like an addiction.
- compression that lies beneath everything, but in an audiophile grade in that is created by people who understand why it exists in the first place, and how it can be applied dynamically without the need for the musician to ride the dial...
- to this they've stacked an EQ that isn't an EQ but a Banxandall-esque attenuator and parametrtic boost to lift the thickened instrument into the needed area of a mix to still cut or blend where needed...
- then you've got the "lo-fi" dialability that shelves those upper frequencies that are the reason our ears are tiring of digital and seeking analogue retroactivity, all whilst adding a woofy sag that adds warmth to even the iciest shrillness...
- and finally making use of the modern cliche of lo-fi, the chorus/vibrato...but one with a breadth of frtequencies relevant to musicality and sweetness and not seasick noisemongering. 3 waveforms too...try hitting your notes bang on the squarewave edge for an amazing oriental oddity by the way.
Okay, look, this is the peanut butter and jelly, s'mores with oreos, tweed wrapped butterscotch secret weapon for all occasions and the creation of two of the most innovative minds (and ears) in the pedal world.
If you're reading this then you already know you're in need of one.
I'm hungry now.