Safari Pedals Zebra Clipper & Bull Sub Machine

Powerful, creative tools lurk beneath these plug‑ins’ playful graphical interfaces...

Safari Pedals were founded by Tel Aviv‑based mixing and mastering engineer Noah Levinberg, who wanted to create audio tools that gave musicians and producers the creative feel of using guitar pedals when producing and mixing. In a relatively short time, Safari’s range of plug‑ins has grown into a full‑blown menagerie, with plug‑ins that combine a bold ‘wild animal’ aesthetic with a simple feature set, focused on ease of use and creativity. I’ve had access to their catalogue for a few months now and have enjoyed throwing these colourful tools onto my mixes with abandon.

Dirty Animals

This is the first time we’ve looked at Safari’s plug‑ins, so I’ll quickly introduce the range (currently 17 plug‑ins) before reviewing the two newest releases, Zebra Clipper and Bull Sub Machine (from here on Bull Sub). Each is competitively priced, and bundles even more so. Most are similar in their styling and controls, and resemble stompboxes. Yak Delay and the Ladybug and DirtyDog reverbs offer creative and colourful spatial effects, and of these DirtyDog (created in collaboration with Joe Chiccarelli) really stood out: it combines saturation with reverb and is especially good for spicing up dry‑sounding drums. Alongside these obviously creative tools are some slightly more conventional offerings, with, for example, Owl Control providing four modes of compression, and Dragon EQ.

There’s much more to be found on this Safari, and the full bundle represents great value for money.A few are styled differently, like the Rhino Reverb, which is based on the Pioneer SR202 spring reverb, and there’s a Roland 501‑inspired Fox Echo Chorus. The Cobra Fuzz, looking like a larger vintage‑style pedal, is unapologetically unsubtle in its attempts to mangle and distort your audio. I enjoyed using these three a great deal, especially the...