Bit Crusher Archives - Pedal of the Day

Bit Crusher


Multi-effects are never boring, let’s face it – usually loaded with a bunch of different effects and fun presets to explore, you can get lost pretty easily in one of these types of machines. That is an giant understatement when talking about today’s pedal, the ENDORPHIN.ES GHOST Stereo Effects Processor. A collaboration with YouTuber and musical explorer Andrew Huang, this silver gem takes effects, signals, routing,...

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We’re venturing back into the unpredictable world of Chase Bliss again today, as we check out their latest release. A collaboration with Goodhertz, an audio software company making plugins and algorithms, Lossy is a lo-fi bit crusher at its heart, but with a TON of other options, nooks and crannies waiting to be explored. Come along as we lose our collective minds trying to decipher what’s going on with this amazing new...

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Today’s pedal is not one that your casual musician will get, or like, or want to have anything to do with, and that makes it all the more rad. The mad scientists at Industrialectric have been conjuring up crazy experimental gear for years, and the 567-M Modulation Machine keeps that streak alive and well. Lots of knob-twisting, ear-piercing and general sonic confusion give you a slight idea about what this pedal is capable...

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Happy Halloween, everybody! In keeping with the spookiness, oddities and non-normal activities of this All Hallows’ Eve, we’ve got an effects unit that defies all logic and convention, giving “out-of-the-box” an entirely new meaning. The aptly named Riemann’s Grave Modulated Allfiter from Discomfort Designs is a curate trio of biquad filters paired with a sample rate reducer. If that doesn’t confuse...

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Our first foray into the world of Discomfort Designs was their 1981 DRV-inspired Spectrum Overdrive, which we were extremely impressed with. Today, we’ve got another pedal from their lineup, one that takes overdrive, delay, bit crushing and general noise, wraps them all up into one wild package and unleashes it on the universe. The Glow Cloud Toxic Delay Device is not going to be for everyone, but for us and those of you who...

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AMA is an Italian verb which means “love” in second person imperative (tu, ama! = you, love!) After an initial string of fantastic dirt pedal releases (Vola, Esplora, Combatti), the team at AC Noises ventured off into modulation/ambient territory with the AMA Reverb Bit Crusher. One of our favorite pedals from 2018, it has gained much notoriety and praise across the globe the last few years. This new version (simply marked...

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Reverb. Oscillation. Bit Crushing. These three effects aren’t usually found on the same pedalboard, much less crammed into ONE PEDAL. The folks at AC Noises decided that the marriage of these three needed to happen, and the AMA was born. Meaning “love” in second person imperative (tu, ama! = you, love!), this deceptive gray pedal is one of the funnest noise creators we’ve come across recently, producing...

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We are gonna get down and dirty today, folks, with a pedal that throws all caution and sonic civility to the wind, then steps on it and smashes it to pieces. The Bit Reactor is a hardware bit crusher and downsampler, creating vintage video game noises and producing real-world signals with a stream of 1s and 0s. Want a wild and wack effect that gets into octave and fuzz territory, all while conjuring up auditory memories of your youth...

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Pedal that are hard to describe, explain or wrap your head around are usually some of the best. The Ottobit Jr from Meris fits squarely into this set of rules, possibly breaking some along it’s sonic warpath as well. Part pitch manipulator, part sampler, part sequencer and all bitcrusher, this little black box will expand your mind and everything you thought you knew about how music is supposed to be created. Inspired by vintage...

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With a long-standing tradition of being anything but traditional, Dwarfcraft Devices have been pushing, reshaping and demolishing the sonic envelopes that we are all used to, and show no signs of stopping that in the near future. A perfect example of the inventive and creative products they’re producing is today’s pedal, the Grazer, a bright orange behemoth that acts as a granular repeater, delay, sampler, and all out wack...

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Every now and again, we get an effect coming through our shop that defies all reason, logic and musicality, and those pedals usually come straight from Akron, Ohio. If you don’t know by now (all 3 of you), EarthQuaker Devices has been not just pushing, but destroying the sonic envelope for the last decade or so, crushing everyone and everything in its path to total oddity domination in the effects pedal world. Today’s...

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Speaking of crazy pedals….no, for real, today’s featured pedal is a real nut, and one we attempted to fully embrace. The Heliotrope is a harmonic pixelator from Catalinbread, and if you’re not sure what that is, neither are we. Still. However, it is a must-have box for all musical experimenters, and one that we had an absolute blast trying to decipher. Basically, a Harmonic Pixelator is Catalinbread’s way of...

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Continuing right where we left off yesterday, we’ve got another awesomely oddball pedal for you today, and it is also one of the most fun ones we’ve had come through our office. The 8Bit-Tron is a strange and marvelous creation from Mammouth Machine, an envelope filter that wants to be a fuzz but is trapped in the body of a bitcrusher and listens to a lot of Jerry Garcia and Stevie Wonder (from the 70’s, of course)....

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Today’s guest review comes to us from Max F. – find him on SoundCloud (@MaxFaith)! The Boss DS-1 is a classic circuit that most of us are familiar with. Players have been modifying the little orange boxes for years and the amount of modifications and spinoffs are too numerous to mention. Despite the variety of DS-1 circuit configurations, most specimens seem to impart the same familiar gain-structure that originally made the pedal a...

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Sometimes, we at Pedal of the Day discover a pedal that is so fun, has so many options and expands our current version of musical enlightenment that it’s hard to play anything else for a while. Today’s featured pedal is exactly along those lines: genre-bending, hard-to-define and definitely in-your-face, the BitQuest Multi-Effect is a site to behold, and a pleasure to hear. From our neighbors to the north, Dr. Scientist,...

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