Wampler
120
GUITARIST APRIL 2020
IMAGES TO BE SHOT
I
t’s taken a while for Wampler to come
up with a modulation pedal, but it’s
been a worthwhile gestation period
because the resulting Terraform has a
feature set with great utilitarian appeal.
The pedal follows the now-established
genre (Strymon Mobius, Boss MD-200,
Eventide H9…) that puts a whole bunch
of modulation effects in one place, so you
have a choice of many while saving on
pedalboard space and power outlets. As
such, the Wampler delivers 11 different
modulation effect types in a compact twin-
footswitch chassis that’s about the size of
three nano-sized pedals side by side.
Operation is designed to be simple
with no menus, just five knobs to tweak
the effect and a straightforward Tap
Tempo. There are eight onboard preset
slots and both mono and stereo operation
is supported, but there’s also a facility
onboard to split the mono signal chain so
some effects can be in front of your drive
section and others after it.
SOUNDS
The array of effects types here is quite
possibly the most pragmatic we’ve yet seen
in a pedal of this type – nothing outlandish,
but the selection is well chosen to cover
a host of modulation eventualities. The
only mainstream one that’s absent is a
dedicated vibrato, but since you can dial in
vibrato by turning the Blend of the chorus
effect up to 100 per cent wet, that may not
be a dealbreaker for you.
Setting up sounds is quick and easy,
and you can save your favourites to the
eight onboard presets for recall when
needed. Presets are scrolled through
and loaded with a press on a small black
button that, midway between the two
footswitches, can actually be operated by
foot if you’re careful. The recommended
method, however, is to use the Tap Tempo
footswitch: holding it down for about three
seconds puts it into Preset mode, and it
can then scroll through and load presets.
Annoyingly, though, if you’ve selected a
preset to use and then want to use Tap
Tempo with it, the necessary press-and-
hold action will advance to the next preset
before reverting to Tap Tempo mode.
If MIDI control appeals, you can map
presets to any program change number. An
expression pedal can be assigned to any of
the five knobs and stored within a preset.
A multi-modulation pedal with a clever pre/post drive capability
Words Trevor Curwen Photography Phil Barker
PEDALBOARD
WAMPLER
Terraform
CONTACT
FIRST LINE DISTRIBUTION 01626 832410 / WWW.WAMPLERPEDALS.COM
MODEL
TERRAFORM
PRICE
£299
MANUFACTURER
WAMPLER
VIDEO DEMO http://bit.ly/guitaristextra
GIT457.peds_wampler.indd 120 20/02/2020 10:27