Long Island City, NY (February 9, 2017) -- EHX introduces the Operation Overlord, a versatile, multi-instrument capable, stereo distortion/overdrive with a broad range of sound options and controls.
A three-position switch lets the user select the proper input level for their instrument and ensures that the Operation Overlord is compatible with guitar, keyboards, bass and most electronic instruments. Active Treble, Mid and Bass controls plus a Dry blend provide total tone shaping.
Silent foot-switchable Normal and Boost modes deliver distortion ranging from mild to saturated. Normal mode uses three JFET gain stages for tube amp-style response and tone while Boost adds a classic pedal-type overdrive circuit before the JFET stages Dedicated LEDs indicate effect status.
Fully stereo capable, the pedal is equipped with left and right ¼” input and output jacks.
The Operation Overlord comes equipped with a standard EHX 9.6DC200mA power supply, is available now and features a U.S. List Price of $197.10.
Grafting technology found in keyboard and modular synthesizers into a pedal designed for guitar and bass players, Electro-Harmonix introduces the Blurst Modulated Filter. The Blurst modulates an instrument’s sound like an envelope filter, but instead of the filter’s response being controlled by playing dynamics, it is controlled by an internal oscillator.
The Blurst features an analog low pass filter with adjustable resonance, three modulation waveform shapes: triangle, rising saw-tooth and falling saw-tooth, a range knob that sets the frequency range of the filter’s modulation, a blend control to adjust the mix of the dry and filtered signal plus a volume control to regulate output volume.
Modulation rate is set by either the rate knob or a combination of the tap footswitch and tap divide toggle switch offering quarter, dotted eighth and triplet rhythms. Three EXP modes, range, rate and filter, can be controlled by an expression pedal or control voltage source.
The result is a pedal that can emulate a wide array of effects including phase shifter like swirls, tremolo-style volume shifts, rhythmic filter sweeps, syncopated shuddering when used with a device such as EHX’s 8 Step Analog Expression/CV Sequencer and more.
The Blurst Modulated Filter comes equipped with a standard EHX 9.6DC200mA power supply, is available now and features a U.S. List Price of $183.20.
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Guitarists are used to coveting cranky, old gear, but if you’re not a rack user, the H3000 might not be for you! If you ever see one of these in a studio, be sure to take some time to check it out, and maybe give the plugin a try.When it debuted in 1987, the H3000 was marketed as an “intelligent pitch-changer” that could generate stereo harmonies in a user-specified key. This was heady stuff in the ’80s! But while diatonic harmonizing grabbed the headlines, subtler uses of this pitch-shifter cemented its legacy. Patch 231 MICROPITCHSHIFT, for example, is a big reason the H3000 persists in racks everywhere. It’s essentially a pair of very short, single-repeat delays: The left side is pitched slightly up while the right side is pitched slightly down (default is ±9 cents). The resulting tripling/thickening effect has long been a mix-engineer staple for pop vocals, and it’s also my first call when I want a stereo chorus for guitar.
The second-gen H3000S, introduced the following year, cemented the device’s guitar bona fides. Early-adopter Steve Vai was such a proponent of the first edition that Eventide asked him to contribute 48 signature sounds for the new model (patches 700-747). Still-later revisions like the H3000B and H3000D/SE added even more functionality, but these days it’s not too important which model you have. Comprehensive EPROM chips containing every patch from all generations of H3000 (plus the later H3500) are readily available for a modest cost, and are a fairly straightforward install.
In addition to pitch-shifting, there are excellent modulation effects and reverbs (like patch 211 CANYON), plus presets inspired by other classic Eventide boxes, like the patch 513 INSTANT PHASER. A comprehensive accounting of the H3000’s capabilities would be tedious, but suffice to say that even the stock presets get deliciously far afield. There are pitch-shifting reverbs that sound like fever-dream ancestors of Strymon’s “shimmer” effect. There are backwards-guitar simulators, multiple extraterrestrial voices, peculiar foreshadows of the EarthQuaker Devices Arpanoid and Rainbow Machine (check out patch 208 BIZARRMONIZER), and even button-triggered Foley effects that require no input signal (including a siren, helicopter, tank, submarine, ocean waves, thunder, and wind). If you’re ever without your deck of Oblique Strategies cards, the H3000’s singular knob makes a pretty good substitute. (Spin the big wheel and find out what you’ve won!)
“If you’re ever without your deck of Oblique Strategies cards, the H3000’s singular knob makes a pretty good substitute.”
But there’s another, more pedestrian reason I tend to reach for the H3000 and its rackmount relatives in the studio: I like to do certain types of processing after the mic. It’s easy to overlook, but guitar speakers are signal processors in their own right. They roll off high and low end, they distort when pushed, and the cabinets in which they’re mounted introduce resonances. While this type of de facto processing often flatters the guitar itself, it isn’t always advantageous for effects.
Effects loops allow time-based effects to be placed after preamp distortion, but I like to go one further. By miking the amp first and then sending signal to effects in parallel, I can get full bandwidth from the airy reverbs and radical pitched-up effects the H3000 can offer—and I can get it in stereo, printed to its own track, allowing the wet/dry balance to be revisited later, if needed. If a sound needs to be reproduced live, that’s a problem for later. (Something evocative enough can usually be extracted from a pedal-form descendant like the Eventide H90.)
Like most vintage gear, the H3000 has some endearing quirks. Even as it knowingly preserves glitches from earlier Eventide harmonizers (patch 217 DUAL H910s), it betrays its age with a few idiosyncrasies of its own. Extreme pitch-shifting exhibits a lot of aliasing (think: bit-crusher sounds), and the analog Murata filter modules impart a hint of warmth that many plug-in versions don’t quite capture. (They also have a habit of leaking black goo all over the motherboard!) It’s all part of the charm of the unit, beloved by its adherents. (Well, maybe not the leaking goo!)
In 2025, many guitarists won’t be eager to care for what is essentially an expensive, cranky, decades-old computer. Even the excitement of occasional tantalum capacitor explosions is unlikely to win them over! Fortunately, some great software emulations exist—Eventide’s own plugin even models the behavior of the Murata filters. But hardware offers the full hands-on experience, so next time you spot an old H3000 in a rack somewhere—and you’ve got the time—fire it up, wait for the distinctive “click” of its relays, spin the knob, and start digging.
