Electro Harmonix

AUGUST 2019 TOTAL GUITAR
Ditch the band nerd with the glasses and the keyboards
to go all guitar, all the time, with these ace synths
103
I
n terms of pure tracking, the Pigtronix is a
staggering achievement. We spent a few
minutes trying to wrong-foot it with bends
and detunes by pushing the headstock and it
reacted perfectly, so long as we stuck to single
notes and not chords. It combines square,
triangle and sub octave sine wave oscillators
into a single heavily-customisable synth
sound, with extra expression input and a
dedicated sub output. We had the most fun in
the octave and unison modes, but on the
whole it’s easy to fi nd good synth tones from
this unit, even if the number of controls on
the front is initially a bit overwhelming.
I
nspired by the legendary Boss Slow Gear,
the Synth-1 is an envelope fi lter with some
added synth goodness. The ‘chaos’ switch
adds octave artefacts and overtones - which
leads us to assume it’s probably a feedback
circuit of some kind – while the fi lter control
is a band-pass for the wave generator. There’s
options for triangle, sine and square waves,
and also for using an expression pedal, for
almost wah-like control of the fi lter. In terms
of tone, it’s thick, fuzzy and particularly tasty
in the triangle mode with a slow attack. With
the blend all the way up, we could see how this
could become a trusted studio tool.
Pigtronix
Mothership 2
TAKE ME TO YOUR LEADER
Keeley
Synth-1
SLOW BURNER
BYPASS
All true bypass
POWER
EHX – 9V DC Centre-negative
Seymour Duncan – 9V DC
Centre-negative
Pigtronix – 18V DC
Centre-negative
Keeley – 9V DC
Centre-negative
CONTACT
EHX – EHX ehx.com
Seymour Duncan – Rosetti
rosetti.co.uk
Pigtronix – JHS jhs.co.uk
Keeley – Andertons
andertons.co.uk
AT A GLANCE
£253
£179
PEDAL ROUND-UP
FEATURES
SOUND QUALITY
VALUE FOR MONEY
BUILD QUALITY
USABILITY
OVERALL RATING
SUMMARY
FEATURES
SOUND QUALITY
VALUE FOR MONEY
BUILD QUALITY
USABILITY
OVERALL RATING
SUMMARY
TGR321.gear_pedals.indd 103 6/19/19 3:18 PM