Splinter Twin

Splinter Twin is your sonic familiar. It clones your signal, alters that clone in time, pitch, texture, phase and feedback, and then re-combines the altered clone with your original signal to create something altogether new.

Functionally, Splinter Twin is a time modulation workstation. A sandbox that lets you manipulate delay lines in highly flexible, extremely precise, and sometimes unusual ways.
Time modulation and short delay lines are the basic building blocks of many widely used and timeless effects: phase offset, flanger, chorus, vibrato, doubling and of course, echo/delay. Splinter Twin achieves all of these and more. But it is not a multi-effect. Rather, it lets you move within, around and between these iconic sounds, and then invites you to push beyond them to discover many more exotic, hybrid, novel and experimental effects. Through-zero phase cancellation, randomized poly-chorus ensembles, glissando warbling self-oscillation, stochastic time jumps and pitched resonators are all among the endless possibilities.

Splinter Twin’s hybrid architecture allows it to wield both extraordinary power and a rich musical character. It delays your signal a maximum of 340ms and a minimum of 0ms, fluidly traversing the entire spectrum of time based effects. As you shorten the delay time, it moves seamlessly from spacious echoes, through the shifting territory of phase and comb textures, all the way down to absolute zero—an instantaneous double—locked in perfect alignment with your dry signal. Very few pedals reach this point, and fewer still with this kind of smooth, musical continuity. Add in creative modulation options and performative feedback controls, and you have a staggering range of sonic possibilities. Its all-analog preamp, feedback paths, tone shaping, and mixing circuits keep every sound—whether pristine, saturated, bright, or dark—rooted in unmistakable analog soul.

Splinter Twin’s boundaries are so broad and the controls are so responsive that you will certainly find sounds that neither you, nor us, nor anyone else in this dimension has ever heard before.

1. TIME controls the length of the delay, from zero (instant) to a max time of 340ms. The range is curved so that the first half of the knob’s rotation yields very short times. These won’t sound like an audible delay, but are ideal for phase-shifting and pitch-altering effects like flanger, chorus, and vibrato. Around noon you’ll begin to hear distinct echoes. From there move through short delays for doubling and then slap-back echo sounds, before finally reaching longer delays capable of classic echo effects.

2. PREAMP sets the gain of the analog soft clipping preamp. Fully counterclockwise is pristinely clean with maximum headroom. As gain is increased the signal will start to saturate and eventually overdrive. This also determines the “record level” of the delay and when boosted will interact with and compete with feedback in dynamic and musical ways.

3. BLEND controls how much dry vs wet signal is mixed to the output.
Minimum is all original (dry). Maximum is all modulated clone (wet).
Balance at noon for the strongest phase interactions between wet and dry.

4. MOD SHAPE selects the type of modulation LFO.
• Sine – Perfect for classic modulation: flangers, vibrato, etc
• Random – Great for natural-sounding chorus or tape warble.
• ALT – A selectable non-standard shape. Defaults to reverse sawtooth.
(see “ALT SHAPE SELECT” in the Appendix).

5. MOD SPEED controls the speed of the LFO. At its slowest (0.017 Hz), the LFO takes a full 60 seconds to complete a cycle. At its fastest (100 Hz), it enters audio rate, unlocking FM style textures and sonic blur.

6. MOD DEPTH determines how far the LFO moves the delay line. Its effect depends heavily on other settings—especially TIME, MOD SPEED, and MOD SHAPE. Longer delay times, and faster modulation make modulation feel deeper. So a little goes a long way. Conversely, short times, slow speeds, and random modulation can feel subtler—you may need to crank the depth to get noticeable movement. Don’t be afraid to min or max it out!

7. DARK filters the wet signal. Fully counter-clockwise: Full-spectrum repeats with all your highs intact—great for sparkling chorus, crisp flanging, and hifi vibrato. Noon: Emulates the classic high-end rolloff of analog BBD delays—warm, lush, and familiar. Fully clockwise: dark repeats that will smear together. DARK also helps shape self-oscillation, nudging it away from harsh noise and toward lush, ambient drones.

8. VOICE selects between three flavors of the wet/cloned signal.
• “+” (positive): A precise copy of the dry.
• “-” (negative): Inverts relative to the dry signal. Especially useful when flanging to switch from “positive” to “negative” flanging, or at longer delay times to change feedback behavior.
• “≈” (multi-tap): Adds a second delayed voice. This second voice is always randomly moving with its own independent LFO, and will loosely follow the speed and depth of the primary LFO. Great for shifting multi-tap delays, polyvoice chorus, and creepy ghostly repeats.

9. FEEDBACK controls the amount that the output of the delay is returned to the input. Higher settings results in more fading repeats and/or more resonant and dramatic modulation effects. When turned up high enough, it will “self-oscillate” with endless growing repeats. Splinter Twin’s feedback path is designed to be highly musical, with an analog soft-clipping circuit which serves to both saturate and limit the volume of self-oscillation.

10. 2x FEEDBACK footswitch doubles the amount of feedback or resonance compared to what is currently selected on the FEEDBACK knob. This is a smart switch: tap to latch it, or hold to engage it momentarily. Great for performative bursts of wild feedback, expressive swells, or for turning a more subtle modulation effect into a deep resonant one on the fly

                                                        Internal controls

Splinter Twin has a few internal controls to further tweak its sound and behaviors. It ships from the factory with optimal defaults for most players, and you don’t need to adjust (or even think about) these internal controls to make full use of the pedal. But for those who want finer grain control

EXPR SELECT lets you chose which parameter can be controlled via the expression pedal/CV input. TIME (default) or MOD SPEED.

ALT SHAPE SELECT allows you to choose which type of waveform can be selected in the third “ALT” position of the MOD SHAPE toggle.
• S&H – Sample and hold. Sudden, unpredictable time jumps.
• R. Saw (default) – A reverse sawtooth wave. Gradually ramps down before snapping back up.
• Saw – A sawtooth wave. Gradually ramps up then snaps back down.

PREAMP EASE slightly reduce the brightness and gain of the preamp. By default they are both off, but can be activated to tweak and dial back the preamps tone.