So, I got a bitcrusher in the mail on friday. Got here pretty quick considering it came from Germany.
The builder's websie is
here. I was browsing over at DIY stompboxes.com and bumped into his projects. Looked at the site, and went for the bitcrusher.
First impressions were that it looks way less DIY'd then I had expected. Finish is great, work inside is really tidy. Turned the pedal on and there's a glorious range of digital, lo fi, and fuzzy madness! Short version of the review is at the bottom.
For all the controls its actually pretty easy to work with, and really controllable for a pedal thats lo fi and geats crazy. Not much in the way of gltchy stuff... a hint of sputter as the note dies off now and then, or if my playing gets really slopy, but on par with my mammoth for sputter, and way less technique sensitive than something like an OC-2.
Blend and
level controls are self explanatory.
Telephone is a bandpass filter.
Downsample turns down the sample rate (32kHz to 1KHz). Gives kind of a ring mod-ish flavor at extreme setting to some high end drone-y ring-y stuff thats only barely noticible on the high notes at low settings. At zero, the other parameters seem pretty much untouched.
Crush apparantly a digital distortion/bitmess control... but I have pretty much no idea what its actually doing. At minimum, there's a faint industrial sounding distortion that really changes as a note decays. The telephone and can pick out those frequencies to acentute it, and the downsample messes with highs more first (I think) so works well in there too. Turn the crush up and it gets to a huge sounding fuzz that has plenty of low end, and actually desn't massacre your envelope too much. Actually can throw an envelope filter after it with decent results.
EXP assign Haven't used it yet, but it should be pretty useful. You can hear some interesting sounds in the clips where settings get changed. My expression pedal is string less, so I can't actually make a clip.
Here's some
clips, although I still have a bit of a high pitched whine in the background in my recordings. Its noticible in the clean signal sample so you know whats my weak recording, and not a flaw in the pedal. Also, this is my LittleMark II's line out so the lows are probably lower and highs higher than if I had a mike to use. Probably want to use some decent speakers/headphones.
Most of the squelches and glitches are from me not paying attention when I change settings and dropa note, but there are some at some settings when I play normally.
The first two are totally wet on the blend, all controls at zero (except level) and the
crush or
downsample is turned up progressively.
The next two show the bandpassfilter. Either
low or
high crush, and a bit of downsampling. Clean blend added part way through.
Finally, with some
other effects (bitcrusher>blueberry>FX25). Higher crush and downsample, and telephone just under half. This clip gets harsh in come places... I'm playing mostly above the 12th fret, and there's two bandpass filters being used on the digital distortion, and some overdrive here and there. It gets messy!
So, the short version...
Pros
-Controls are easy to use and well thought out.
-Wide range of sounds available... lofi to fairly subtle.
-Hangs on to your lows (if you want it too)
-just sounds great
Cons
-some glitches if you get sloppy with your playing. Not too badly though.
-it would be nice if the "crush" at minimum was completely off. there's some good sounds with it the way it is, but an "off" setting would be good if it didn't come at the expense ofthe maximum setting.
I hate to sound too positive in a review, but the pedal does what I expected and does it well. I'll post more pros and cons if I find them as I play more, but for now I'm REALLY impressed with it!
