Noise Engineering are a well-known name in the modular synth world, where they’ve earned quite the reputation for their innovative new takes on classic concepts. Their latest release, Dystorpia, is their first foray into guitar pedals, and is said to offer an entirely unique approach to digital distortion and drive.
The company are no strangers to distortion, with over a dozen of their Eurorack modules utilising it in some way, shape or form. Dystorpia brings together the techniques they’ve developed over the last ten years and promises to provide guitarists with an expansive overdrive toolkit, and as you might expect, also includes some features derived from the synth world. Although it’s been primarily designed for guitars, Noise Engineering say that it also sounds great on basses, synths, drums and more.
There are four parameters that govern the pedal’s distortion character: Gain, which sets the input level entering the pedal and facilitates classic drive tones; Blend, which adds some saturation of its own as well as its primary function of mixing between the processed and unprocessed signals; Fold, which controls a synth-inspired wavefolding algorithm and introduces a unique flavour of harmonic distortion; and Pura, which throws a full-wave rectifier into the mix. The company say that experimenting with different amounts of Fold and Pura offers a wide range of tonal options.
A Tone dial does exactly as you might expect, offering bass- or treble-heavy sounds as well as everything else in between, and works in conjunction with a Mid Band knob to provide detailed control over the pedal’s overall sound. There’s an expression pedal input that allows users to control the Tone parameter from an expression pedal or via an external CV signal, making it possible to create wah-style effects.
It doesn’t stop there, though, Noise Engineering have also included a switchable noise gate, a sub-octave generator and a freeze effect that can activated via a footswitch in either latching or momentary modes. Interestingly, the pedal is still capable of processing input signals while a frozen signal is held, allowing users to play a melody over a frozen chord, for example.
“From the start, we knew we wanted to make something designed with guitarists in mind. Our testing initially focused entirely on how Dystorpia sounds with the more complex dynamics of guitars. Once we got there, we started trying it on other instruments and we were excited at how well we’d hit our mark; Dystorpia sounds great on guitars, but also basses, synths, drums and more.” - Stephen McCaul, co-owner and Chief Noisemaker, Noise Engineering
Pricing & Availability
Dystorpia is available now, priced at $399.
