Wait.... we're here to discuss dirt pedals? I assumed it was either philosophical conundrums, or football-related geopolitics. Did I miss a memo or something?
Right now, we're here because of the Baltimore Sonic Research Institute Everything We Don't Know About The Ocean Floor.
Apart from having a name that is quite a mouthful and requires to draw a slightly deeper breath than usual to say it, the Baltimore Sonic Research Institute Everything We Don't Know About The Ocean Floor is a chorus pedal. It's not a Chorus/Vibrato, focusing only on chorus work.
There are five knobs and one switch on the control panel of the Baltimore Sonic Research Institute Everything We Don't Know About The Ocean Floor.
One knob is named Voice (but in the manual it is referred to as "Filter", you sloppy people at the BSRI) which slaps a low pass filter on the wet part of the signal. Something for people with roundwounds. I keep that firmly dimed at all times.
The switch is three way and offers "normal" "more delay between dry and wet" and "more delay between dry and wet, but slightly different".
The four remaining knobs are Rate and Depth, but twice - because here's the party trick: It's actually two chorus pedals in one. We get Rate A and Depth A and of course Rate B and Depth B. The LFOs that are controlled by the Rate knobs have different speed settings with A running a fair bit faster than B.
If you turn down either A or B completely, you get a normal chorus effect.
There is no gain knob and no volume knob. The Baltimore Sonic Research Institute Everything We Don't Know About The Ocean Floor takes whatever signal level is fed and leaves it at that, unaltered. With my equipment I was not able to hit it so hard that it goes into saturation or drive. I even took off the bottom plate and had a look inside. Lo and behold, two trim pots greeted me. "Now we're cooking", I muttered, but before touching them, I put on my spectacles to read the tiny writing. From their position on the PCB alone, I was not able to figure which was gain and which was master.
As the tiny details that nowadays escape my fading eyesight came into razor sharp focus, I let out a little sigh of disappointment. Those little buggers were labeled with "LFO" and "Bias". There is no gain to be found here, either. Utterly defeated I accepted my fate. I had bought a pedal that is completely useless as a dirt pedal. I deflated a bit and proceeded trying this pedal as a chorus.
[Dirt people can stop reading here.]
There are two settings that are famous among chorus users - either a lot of effect and very little speed or the opposite - not so deep of an effect, but fast. The latter mimics a Leslie sound while the former gets that deep and wide soundscape that gives off a fretless vibe if used correctly. The Baltimore Sonic Research Institute Everything We Don't Know About The Ocean Floor can not only do both, it can do both at the same time. Which does not sound as good as it sounds. What I found on my first dive with the Baltimore Sonic Research Institute Everything We Don't Know About The Ocean Floor was that it works well to use one of the two to get the desired sound and then turn up the others depth knob just a bit and toy around with the LFO speed to create some ripples in the sound. Imagine your clean sound as the surface of a pond in a cloud- and windless full moon night.
The sound you get from turning up either side of the Baltimore Sonic Research Institute Everything We Don't Know About The Ocean Floor is the surface of the pond just after you dropped a big stone into the middle. Those concentric waves, evenly expanding towards the shore create something that captures the eye (or ear). When you turn up the other side on the Baltimore Sonic Research Institute Everything We Don't Know About The Ocean Floor, it's like dropping a second, smaller stone at the same time, but slightly off center. The ripples suddenly become quite chaotic. At some points, they escalate each other to create larger ripples while at other points, they work against each other. The second stone is smaller, so are the ripples it created. There will be no cancelling out.
Your chorus gains an organic component. I'm reminded of me as a kid, sitting in the car in front of a red light, watching the indicators of the cars in front, how they shift in and out of phase. Chorusing a chorus is something that needs to be practiced a bit until you find a practical use for it. On the Baltimore Sonic Research Institute Everything We Don't Know About The Ocean Floor I'm experiencing the same issues I had with the Fairfield Circuitry Shallow Water.
On the Shallow Water, you have that K-Field modulator that also moves in an unpredictable way, which gives off an organic vibe when used. However, both on the Shallow Water and on the Baltimore Sonic Research Institute Everything We Don't Know About The Ocean Floor, you can be unlucky and hit one of the important notes just as something weird happens and as a result, it sounds like you botched the note - to the audience it feels more like sloppy playing than a freak wave hitting your ship that was sailing just right a moment ago.
On the Shallow Water there was no omitting this, but on the Baltimore Sonic Research Institute Everything We Don't Know About The Ocean Floor one can twist knobs for a bit and end up with some setting where the possibility of getting the aforementioned scenario is so low that it does not really impact anything. It's subtle then, but it works just like a very subtle chorus works on a clean signal. You listen to it and don't really detect a chorus. Then you drop the effect and suddenly, the change is obvious. Imagine that subtle enhancement on top of another chorus, one that is less subtle in its ways.
I kicked in my current favorite synth chain setting, which consists of the Fake Plastic Trees with all knobs to 3/4 (except for level) into the BDPG into the PastFX PX101. What I like about this setup is that it's all analog and does not have an octave pedal in it, so I can play in the same pitch as usual, and I get to play double stops. Feeding the signal from the envelope filter into the Baltimore Sonic Research Institute Everything We Don't Know About The Ocean Floor was quite the revelation. I had my favorite sound dialed in, which is a mangled fuzz with lots of bottom (the BDPG is there to fatten up the output of the FPT) hitting the envelope that will only allow a certain amount of fizz to pass when it's hit. Playing that sound into the chorus immediately gave off the vibe of someone using a very expensive synthesizer system to recreate the soundtrack of a Commodore C64 game. You totally get that it's aiming for 8 bit sound, it really does it, too - but you also get that it's something that can do much more which is trying to emulate something that can do only so little.
Minutes passed where I was simply trying to play the more catchy of those tunes of the C64 era from memory.
Up until now I'd say the Baltimore Sonic Research Institute Everything We Don't Know About The Ocean Floor is a well made chorus with a twist that allows for modulating beyond the walls that hem in standard chorus effects.
