Description
Oh, oh, here she comes. She’s a man eater. Actually, she’s a sequenced pitch shifter called Pitch Grinder. Our first foray into the digital realm, the PG smashes your signal down into 8 bits of mayhem, and then tosses them up and down in pitch, in intervals of your choosing.
The Pitchgrinder is ready for action! We have eight tunable stages, labeled in sequence on the face of the box, with a handy bunch of LEDs to inform you of which step you are on. The shift range is from -1 octave to +2 octaves. Don’t worry about hitting the “in between” notes, the PG will only hit what most consider “real” shifting intervals. Of course, if your input is slightly out of tune, your effected signal will be as well.
The engage switch makes the thing go. The tap switch does many things. Of course, it sets the tempo for the unit. When your Grinder is running, depress the tap switch to freeze the pattern where it is. When you release the tap switch, the Grinder will resume running the pattern.
The “Length” knob controls the length of the pattern, from one to eight steps. When the length is set to 1, the Tap switch can be used to cycle to the next stage of shifting.
And we’ve JUST added the feature to push this pedal into outer space… Glide. Glide mode will be turned on and off via a toggle on the face of the unit. This mode is much like the glide function on a synthesizer, winding your pitch up or down to the next step in the pattern.
We’ve got a few flavors of teaser available now, giving you a taste of the Pitch Grinder’s personality.
Yes, the pedal is designed to work with all instruments. We’ve tested it with single coil, and humbucker guitars, basses, microphones made out of telephone handsets, and synths. And the Pitch Grinder grinds them all.
This wonderful pedal was programmed by and engineered with the newest member of the Dwarfcraft Clan, Bob Lowy of Eau Claire, Wisconsin. Bob and I worked together for a year to take the Grinder from an idea I assumed was impossible to the pedal we are about to unleash.
Recently we sent a tour box around the country to let some of our web friends try out the prototype. And boy, did we get some demos!