New pedals from Electro-Harmonix

[Mark Hammer]

A nice big 2-page ad from E-H this month shows off some new pedals/effects, some of which are presumably available right now, and others of which are slated for release later in the year:

1) Rackmount Bi-Filter: This one looks like it just may set the standard for envelope controlled filters.  Think of it as Mutron III meets the Bi-Phase.  A pair of full-function envelope controlled multi-mode filters with independent envelope control, mixing capabilities, and series/parallel connection.   Sherman...set the freak-out machine to 10; we're going to visit Dr. Funkenstein at the mothership connection.

2) NY-2A Stereo Tube compressor.  I will assume this is the handiwork of our  colleague Ton Barmentloo and will prod no further, except to say that the panel indicates several alternate illumination sources.  I assume this means it is an optical compressor that can take on a few different personalities, based on the properties of the light source.  Clever.  It does this in the absence of any visible controls for envelope shaping other than an "attack" toggle switch on the front panel.  You will notice the subtle geography joke in the product name: this isn't an LA-2A[/i], folks, it's an NY[/i]-2A.  Get it?  (if not, go here: http://www.uaudio.com/products/analog/LA-2A/ ).  It's not exactly "Big Muff Pi", but as joke product names go, it's still nicely tongue in cheek.

3) Double Muff - already discussed here, but seems from a review to be capable of some subtle coloration as well as thick fuzz.  Essentially a cascaded diode clipper.

4) Pulsar - Always nice to see a tremolo pedal on the market again, especially when many amps don't come with it anymore.  This one appears to use "the diode trick" in the LFO to get additional waveforms beyond a simple triangle/square function found on several other units.  More variation than the original, though I would expect than a great dealof the waveform variations will be largely lost on people at faster settings....so it *better sweep slow*.

5) White Finger compressor pedal - Described as a "multi-FET compressor", which could mean a few things.  One is that it uses a pair of FETs and is essentially a modded/improved Orange Squeezer.  Another is that it does a simple job of band-splitting for a smoother compression across the spectrum at low cost.  Haven't seen one or heard one so I can't speculate more than that.  Slated for April release.

6) Tube E - A tube-based equalizer.  Again, likely Ton's handiwork.  Not much said, and probably not much to say except that folks like tubes and E-H has 'em.  Slated for May release.

7) POG - Probably of most interest to most people here.  A Polyphonic  (i.e., you can play chords) Octave Generator (get it? POG?).  Includes one and 2 octaves up and one octave down, all mixable with straight sound.  Promises lots of flexibility.  I'm guessing here, but it's a safe bet; this will be E-H's second obvious foray into DSP (the first being the Holy Grail).  I say this simply because you can't do polyphonic octaving (up OR down) in the analog domain unless you use a hex-pickup, so this is clearly digital.  E-H is going head-to-head here with the Boss OC-3, also a DSP-based polyphonic octaver.  There MAY be something to mod here with respect to   tone since there is seemingly an analog mixing stage for combining the voices, but I think I'd wait until the warranty expires first.  Scheduled for May release.

8} 16-second delay:  The return of an old favourite, with a complete redesign (can you even FIND those A/D convertors and RAM any more?).  The package and feature set seem to be unchanged, however, although there may be a few additional bells and whistles.  Certainly, given the cost of low-power RAM thse days, I can't imagine this thing actually *needing* the vent but it is still there (the original used the same punched case as the Microsynth, Graphic Fuzz and 10-band EQ, but left a few of the slider slots empty for air circulation).  We'll see how this does up against the Boss DD-20 Giga-Delay.  The DD-20 has more delay time and probably more features, but the 16SDD has all those slider knobs.  Sound quality may also be a big deciding factor (no info about a/d resolution or sample rate), but of course that's hard to tell from a picture and short paragraph.  Slated for a limited run and June release.

In general, nice to see some forward thinking on some of these products.  In particular, rackmount stuff from E-H can only mean good things for the future.  Once Mike Matthews has a stack of pre-punched 2-U rack panels that need to get used up (for the Bi-Filter), there's no telling what sorts of legendary beasts will come to fill those slider-pot slots.  Who know, maybe even the return of the E-H Vocoder or Guitar Synth (I better start counting up the number of slider-pot slots in those things just to see).

[puretube]

Hi there Mark:
sorry to have to correct you: too much of honour!
Only the new "PULSAR" is my design.
And I just happened to have unpacked the copy I bought at Frankfurt MusikMesse: not like you mentioned the variety might get lost at higher rates:
very audible in the entire range from about 1 period in 10seconds(!) to about (estimated) 20Hz, which gets doubled, when "depth" is maxed out beyond the 3 o`clock position. ("ringmod"-sounds).
Only in sqr-wave position at extreme pulsewidth settings, you barely notice the short "dropouts" or "onsets" of the signal at very fast rates.
(Hadn`t heard this little thing since I sent out the prototypes to NY...).

My friend, the famed JC Morrison (well known in HiEnd HiFi circles), who
is also responsible for new E-H tube-designs,
is the designer of the NY-2A, like for the "Black Finger" pedal tube-compressor, as well as the new "Tube-EQ".
(only the basics (& looks): chassis, power supply and bypass cicuitry are based on my stuff).

As you already may have guessed, the Bi-Filter is by Mike Beigel !

(for the rest, I`ll remain silent like a True Bypass....)

[Mark Hammer]

Thanks for the additional information and corrections.  Always nice to know WHO designs this stuff.  With the larger companies, it's always so faceless (We may know who designs stuff in the boutique companies, but does anyone here know who designed ANY of the Boss or DOD or Rocktek or Guyatone pedals?).

If the Pulsar goes that slow (capable of ramp-swells) AND that fast, (capable of ring-mod type sounds with variable modulation waveform), then this is an extremely big improvement on the original and a very flexible pedal.  Kudos.  I guess what I meant by my waveform/speed comment was that a lot of users probably wouldn't either hear the difference between some waveforms at higher speeds, or else wouldn't know what to do with it.    That's much more a comment on users than on the design itself.

Of course it won't be long until somebody eventually asks "How do I make it modulate faster?" or "Can I gang/sync two of these together?".

Nice to see Mike Beigel back in the loop.  I saw a picture of a prototype floor-box Mutron 9 or something that was an uber-filter on the scale of the Bi-Phase, which never made it past the prototype stage.  Based on the picture, it seemed to have more complexity than the Beigel Labs rackmount unit that came and went very quickly.  Of course, that one has nothing on the new product, which seems to compare quite favourably with the Sherman Filterbank, Oakley, and the Electrix units.  Indeed, stick a POG into the input of one of these, (and from there into a Pulsar...of course... ) and you have pretty much everything you'd want out of an analog guitar synth.

[puretube]

Of course it won't be long until somebody eventually asks "How do I make it modulate faster?.....".

100n cap & SPST in series with the existing LFO-cap gets you well into the audio (ringmod-) range; (where the waveform-variation really only remains a minor influence-factor);
(smaller cap gets you even higher: since this is not an opto-coupler circuit,
"beyond" audio is the limit...)

[Rodgre]

I've tried out the new Pulsar a few months ago and I thought it was one of the most versatile and usable tremolos out there (many, many tones can be had out of it) and all for the low low price...... It's somewhere around $75, If I recall. Very good deal. I just wish it was in a smaller box!

The White Finger I believe is based on the tube Black Finger circuit, with FETs doing what the tubes were doing. At least, that's what I read.

Roger
eagerly awaiting the 16 second delay, but equally frightened that it won't sound like the original.

[StephenGiles]

Puretube - I understand that there was a Brown Finger pedal for a while back in the old EH days, but PC got the better of them and they called it the Black Finger!

[StephenGiles]

Funnily enough, I often call my dog POG.

[puretube]

Stephen: didn`t that happen to be the: Bad Finger ?
(with the stuck-up middle-finger-logo?)

[StephenGiles]

No, it was definitely Brown Finger - according to Joe Truchess.

[puretube]

sorry Sir:
EH-3005:
http://electroharmonix.ronsound.com/ehlist.html


(somewhere, I got a pic of the logo...)

so the blackfinger was the blackfinger,
like the pulsar was the pulsar,
like the hottubes were the hottubes,
and where the tubezipper was the zipper;

and Badfinger was a Paul McCartney-befriended Band in the late
sixties, who had the (if you want it, here it is) Come and Get It - hit.

[StephenGiles]

No - it was apparently an EH in-house joke at the time - you know the sort of thing - overgrown schoolboys having a drink together, that's all.

[Paul Marossy]

The POG sounds cool. It is a little frustrating not being able to anything other than single note stuff on my octave pedal. I don't know if I would like to play chords an octave lower/higher, but it would be nice to have the option...