Electro-Harmonix Crash Pad

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MINI REVIEWS

We got a little excited when

Electro-Harmonix announced both

the Super Space Drum and Crash

Pad analogue drum synth boxes. As

both are faithful recreations using the

same analogue circuitry as the

originals, we couldn’t wait to get

stuck into some retro-beat action.

The workmanlike Crash Pad is

capable of creating kick, snare, tom,

hi-hat and cymbal sounds and

opening up the decay will spew forth

more drone-like sounds. Enveloping

the sound is taken care of with the

Start, Stop, Time and Decay controls

and they’re all fed through the

resonant  lter, controlled by the

Resonance knob, allowing you to craft

all manner of percussive noises that

will easily  t into straight-up Dance

numbers, or more atmospheric

odysseys. All drumming aside, you

can feed any signal through the

resonant  lter via the Aux In socket.

The  lter can also be controlled

externally by an expression pedal or

CV sequencer, so there’s really a lot of

potential in this little box.

The Super Space Drum doesn’t

feel as useful as it doesn’t feature an

Expression/CV input. As the name

suggests, SSD is perfectly at home

creating more ‘out there’ percussive

sounds. Sci- bleeps can be turned

into more dub-like sirens. However,

with a  ick of the modulation switch

you can dial up some craziness with

the Depth and Rate controls and

there is also an Aux In, but this time

the external signal is passed through

the gated amplier.

Both units feature a trigger button

on the front panel, which is just a

switch and feels rather cheap. It

doesn’t lend itself to performance

either – a small pad would be much

better. Instead, the switches are  ne

for just demoing sounds as both units

can be triggered externally with drum

triggers or a clock generator, such as

EHX’s very own Clockworks.

It’s not often we pit two products

against each other, but with these two

machines there is a chance that you’ll

have the budget for just one, so which

is it to be? Both certainly have their

place in anyone’s arsenal, but for us

the Crash Pad wins out. CP is far

more  exible than its spaced-out

companion with the addition of the

expression input alone… But it’s

more than that. There is more sonic

variation here, making it a more

useful addition to your set-up. What is

slightly against both units is their

price to function ratio. Compared with

the likes of the Korg Volca Beats,

you’re not getting much for your

money, but they still offer bags full of

character to warrant their price tag.

In short, these are two different

drum synths, both have their own

character, with the Crash Pad edging

it for all-round usability. EHX would

do well to release both pedals and

even the Clockworks as Eurorack

modules. Simon Arblaster

Crash Pad

8/10

Super Space Drum

7/10

Electro-Harmonix Super Space

Drum and Crash Pad | £92 each

www.ehx.com

Blocs Wave | £3.99

http://blocs.cc

Wave is a track starting instrument from Novation’s app

development arm, Blocs. The app is divided into browsing,

editing and recording. Included are six sound packs, with

more available. At its heart Wave is a sampler with a

powerful time-stretching engine and features waveform

editing. During our test with an iPad Mini 4, there seemed

slight anti-aliasing when making big tempo/key changes,

but it is brief and incremental changes are not affected. All

in all, Wave is very well thought out and, with Ableton Link,

even more useful than we  rst thought. Simon Arblaster

9/10