Basses

10 new pedals and effects units: July 2020

July 31, 2020

Every month, we compile a few lists of gear that’s fresh out of the oven. Here’s one devoted to new guitar pedals.
Sitik Freya Boost/Overdrive
Image: Sitek Guitar ElectronicsSitek Guitar Electronics has launched the Freya Overdrive/Boost, the brand’s first dual-pedal, designed in partnership with guitarist Joss Allen. The drive section of the pedal offers a low- to mid-gain overdrive, said to emphasise a “focused mid-push”. This is paired with three distinct clipping voices that go from “smooth, bluesy breakup” to “open and focused” for pushing the front-end of a dirty channel, and “mid-rich lead tone”. Other controls specific to the overdrive section include drive and tone knobs.
The boost, meanwhile, is full-ranged and voiced to be transparent. It offers up to 12dB of clean boost on tap, and can be reordered to either appear before or after the drive section – so you can use it to pop out on top of a mix for a solo, or to drive the rest of the pedal into higher gain.
The Freya Overdrive/Boost is available at €210 through sitek.rocks.
Way Huge Green Rhino MKV
Image: Way HugeThis latest iteration of Way Huge‘s classic TS-style boost is squeezed into an even smaller enclosure than before, while it also comes with a couple of tweaks to the frequency controls. The standard Drive, Volume and Tone knobs remain, but the two extra small knobs are now Freq and Shape, with the former cutting/boosting either 100Hz or 500Hz (set internally), and the latter taming aggressive high-end.
The pedal lists for $129.99. Find out more at jimdunlop.com.
Poly Effects Beebo
Image: Poly EffectsNo, not the defunct social network – that only has one ‘e’. Poly Effects’ Beebo is instead a multi-modulation pedal that takes after Eurorack modular synths. It’s controlled via an intuitive touch screen display, which is used to access its array of conventional and modular effects, flexible routing options and even a drum machine. Its design is effectively a more experimental take on the multi-fx stompbox form.
The familiar set of choruses, delays, EQs, compressors, phaser and many more. These are visualised as blocks on the graphic interface and can be routed by simple dragging and drawing to create custom patches. Each effect also offers a wealth of controls – the rotary effect, for instance, sports an insane level of customisability, with 30 parameters.
But aside from these, there are also a set of powerful modular effects, ported directly from popular Eurorack modules. These include a granular texture synthesiser, 16-model macro oscillator and a meta modulator with seven blendable signal-combining algorithms. On top of this, there are also some more esoteric effects, such as turntable stop, twist delay and time stretch.
The Beebo is available for $399, directly through polyeffects.com.
Dawner Prince Electronics Pulse
Image: Dawner Prince ElectronicsDawner Prince Electronics’ Pulse, aims to accurately recreate revolving cabinets. It can operate in two speed modes: fast, or slow. When toggling between these, the
Pulse operates in two speed modes: fast or slow. Notably, toggling between these two doesn’t happen in clear-cut, A/B fashion. The effect ‘accelerates’ or ‘decelerates’ depending on how the Inertia control is set, lending to the overall experience of playing through a real revolving cabinet rather than a PCB recreation of one.
Both modes also feature their own speed control knobs, with slow’s ranging from 0.4 to four revolutions per second, and fast’s going from four to eight revolutions per second.
The Distance knob, which acts as a virtual microphone placement control, adds further realism to the effect by mimicking either close or room mic’ing. Other notable features on the Pulse include a mix knob, an expression input, and stereo outputs.
Pulse is available now for $339.95 at dawnerprince.com.
EHX 1440
Image: Electro-HarmonixElectro-Harmonix’s 1440 Stereo Looper is a fairly feature-packed looper, offering 24 minutes of recording time, unlimited overdubbing, built-in effects and more. It records uncompressed audio at 24-bit/44.1kHz and allows up to 20 loops to be stored in its internal memory. It’s also possible to upload your own audio files by USB connection and through a companion software. These could be your own backing tracks, practice routines or even samples you might want to have ready on your ‘board.
Above the footswitches are four buttons to toggle the reverse and octave effects, one-shot mode and (because the 1440 can be synced to a MIDI clock) an external clock mode. Other controls include level, blend, tempo knobs, and a mode rotary knob for cycling between the 20 stored loops. For added control, an external footswitch can be connected to access the 1440’s undo/redo function.
The 1440 Stereo Looper is available now at $221.30. learn more at ehx.com.
SolidGoldFX SG Oblivion
Image: SolidGoldFXSolidGoldFX’s Oblivion is a three-mode quad flanger pedal that offers a high degree of control over its three modulation modes. These include a classic through-zero, reminiscent of vintage flangers; a bi-flange, which delivers a fluid and spacey sound, and a modern quad-flange that dives full-on into producing otherworldly modulated sweeps. In terms of knobs, the pedal offers the standard flanger fare: controls for speed, range, ramp, regen, blend and output level. These are accompanied by two duo-function foot switches, and a set of four mode mini- switches.
In addition to turning the effect on or off, the bypass foot switch can be held down to place the LFO in a momentary hold. The tap tempo foot switch, when similarly held down, intensifies the speed and depth of the effect upwards or downwards, depending on how the ramp control is set.
As for the four mode mini-switches, wave lets players choose between a sine, bell and downward sawtooth LFO shape for the effect; the 1/4-1/2-1 switch toggles between three tap tempo subdivisions; flange toggles between the three flanging modes, and degrade introduces a lo-fi effect to the signal.
The Oblivion is priced at £245, learn more about it at solidgoldfx.com.
Dunlop Auto Return Crybaby Mini
Image: DunlopDunlop’s auto-returning wah, the Crybaby CBM535AR, has received the mini-pedal treatment. Sporting a similar form factor to the Crybaby Mini 535Q wah, this model gives players access to the iconic Crybaby sound in a more pedalboard-friendly form factor.
With the new auto-return function, the wah effect engages as soon you place your foot on the pedal. Unlike models that require the pedal to be fully depressed to engage the effect, this will allow players to introduce quick bursts of wah on-the-fly.
Along with this, the Crybaby CBM535AR features several controls for fine-tuning its sound. These include a variable Q knob to set the wah’s intensity; a four-position range selector for selecting the effect’s frequency range, and a boost switch with its own volume knob that goes up to +16dB.
The Crybaby CBM535AR is priced at $149.99, learn more at jimdunlop.com.
Glou-Glou Steak
Image: Glou-GlouGlou-Glou’s Steak is a pretty experimental take on the distortion pedal, featuring dual-channels, modulation, fuzz, analogue octaves and filtering.
The core of the Steak lies in its two near-identical distortion circuits, which are run in parallel. These can be fed by either a dry signal, or a signal that passes through an onboard fuzz circuit first. Both distortion modules offer a variety of operating modes that include soft and hard clipping, gated square, as well as octave-up and octave down.
The Steak offers a pre-distortion bandpass filter and a post-distortion low-pass filter, each with its own frequency, modulation depth and resonance controls. These can be applied and tweaked to achieve some very funky sounding results.
Adding on to this, the filters’ frequency control can be set to either envelope up, envelope down, or to read off the LFO or external expression device.
In all, it’s a densely-packed box that offers an incredible level of control over how your sound is destroyed.
The Glou-Glou Steak is priced at $470/€400, and is available at glou-glou.org.
Hamstead Ascent boost
Image: Hamstead Soundworks via Reverb.comHamstead’s Ascent is a boost pedal with a difference – it’s being built by tour technicians who are out of work due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. Each unit is hand-soldered, signed and dated by a team of pro music techs, and in addition to this 10 percent of the profits from the pedal will go towards Help Musicians UK, a relief fund providing support for music professionals who’ve been impacted by COVID-19.
The pedal itself is fairly straightforward, with a single knob to dail in up to 20dB of transparent gain thanks to its high-headroom internal voltage.
The pedal is available exclusively through Reverb.com, listing for £159 / $199. Order one here.
Nux MG300
Image: NuxNux has followed up its previous multi-FX units with its MG300, a decidedly premium-looking pedal that offers a host of effects and amp modelling. It works off Nux’s TSAC-HD algorithm, or “True Simulation of Analogue Circuit.” This means the amplification is ‘non-linear’ – just like in a real-world tube amplifier, your tone is a summation of all the parameters at play, which also all affect each other. NUX’s TSAC-HD simulates the negative feedback present in real analogue and tube circuits.
The unit processing your sound with a familiar series of simulated effects, amplifiers, and cabinets. Nux’s Quick Tone software, can also load patches, tweak parameters and set up audio routing via USB to use the unit as an interface – as well as load in your own IRs.
Find out more at nuxefx.com.
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