Premier Guitar features affiliate links to help support our content. We may earn a commission on any affiliated purchases.

Old Blood Noise Endeavors Flat Light Review

Old Blood Noise Endeavors Flat Light Review

A flanger with a few tricks up its sleeve.

Ā  Ā 
Ā 

Ratings

Pros:
New take on an old effect. Realtime control. Fun tilt mode.

Cons:
Not warm-sounding. Audible digital artifacts.

Street:
$199

Old Blood Noise Endeavors Flat Light
oldbloodnoise.com


Tones:


Ease of Use:


Build/Design:


Value:
Ā 

The latest release from Old Blood Noise Endeavors is the Flat Light, a flanger with cool and trippy extras. It’s a digital effect—the popular Spin FV-1 chip generates the pedal’s pitch shifting and delay. The Flat Light resides in a standard 125B-sized enclosure and runs on the usual 9V power supplies. There is no battery compartment.

Flange Facts
It’s easiest to understand the Flat Light’s expanded take on flanging if you know how the basic effect works. (Skip ahead if you know this stuff.) Flangers mix your dry signal with a very slightly delayed duplicate of the signal. This offset creates phase conflicts between the two signals, often resulting in hollow-sounding and/or clangorous tones. That signal is then pitch shifted, which produces rich chorus-like sounds at modest settings and mad whoops and screeches at high settings. A flanger’s feedback control makes the delayed signal repeat (though it happens so quickly that you don’t hear individual echoes). High feedback settings yield the jet-engine whooshes we associate with flangers.

The Flat Light has the usual flanger controls: depth and rate (of the pitch shift) plus mix (the wet/dry balance). In the Flat Light’s traditional flanger mode (called ā€œresonateā€), the shift knob controls feedback. Here you get all the usual flanger effects, from subtle choral thickening to otherworldly clanks and drones.

Other settings produce intriguingly chaotic noises you couldn’t coax from a conventional flanger.

They Put a Twist on It!
So far, so good—but the Flat Light’s toggle switch provides two additional modes. In detune mode, the delay is pitch-shifted. Not in the usual small increments, but as much as an octave up or down. Here, the shift knob controls the amount of transposition rather than feedback. At some settings this mode behaves like an octave pedal, with clear up/down shifts. Other settings produce intriguingly chaotic noises you couldn’t coax from a conventional flanger.

The third mode, echo, adds longer delays to the wet signal. This unlocks a raft of quasi-reverb effects—an eerie alternative to traditional delay and reverb. Here, the shift knob regulates delay time. The flanger depth is fixed, and the depth knob controls resonance instead.

Quality and Coloration
The Flat Light definitely sounds digital, without the distortion and coloration of vintage flangers with their bucket-brigade delay chips. That’s not necessarily bad—it’s just a different flavor. Still, tones are far from pristine. The pitch shifts are decidedly lo-fi, with perceptible bleating. The Flat Light might not be a great choice if you seek a retro flanger’s warmth, but the lo-res transpositions have a unique color that noise-oriented players may dig. Meanwhile, the dry signal isn’t perfectly transparent. Even with modulation turned off and a 100 percent dry setting, tones acquire a midrange bump at around 250 Hz. This low-mid boost can make the high end seem dimmer, though again, it has its own character.

Two more cool features: There’s an expression pedal jack (pedal not included) to pilot the multi-mode shift knob by foot. And a dedicated tilt footswitch momentarily maxes out the shift knob for as long as you keep your foot down. It’s handy for unleashing momentary shrieks and clangs, which might sound bitchin’ while building up to a big downbeat.

The Verdict
For better or worse, the Flat Light is no old-school flanger. Its tones are more icy than warm. On the other hand, its three modes venture well beyond the usual flanger vocabulary, and often to fine effect. Chances are this is a better choice for naughty noisemakers than for retro cork sniffers.

Classic counterpoint techniques that work for surf.

Intermediate

Intermediate

• Learn some time-honored guidelines of classical composition.

• Apply revered rules to more modern styles.

• Create interesting and complex surf lines.
{'media': '[rebelmouse-file-pdf 80034 original_filename="Bach+to+the+Beach.pdf" site_id=20368559 expand=1]', 'media_html': 'Bach to the Beach.pdf', 'id': 80034, 'type': 'pdf', 'file_original_url': 'https://roar-assets-auto.rbl.ms/files/80034/Bach to the Beach.pdf'}

The term counterpoint scares many people who think it is a carefully devised process that strips you of creative freedom. This is partly true, because some individuals have pushed the practice of counterpoint as strict rules at some point without explaining its purpose. I disagree with the view that music theory is a rule. Counterpoint, like serialism or any other principle of harmony, is simply a recipe for an expected result. These music theory recipes are not baking recipes where exact measurements must be made; music theory is more like cooking, which is more malleable and open to in-the-moment modifications.

Read MoreShow less

See and hear Taylor’s Legacy Collection guitars played by his successor, Andy Powers.

Read MoreShow less

The Oceans Abyss expands on Electro-Harmonix’s highly acclaimed reverb technology to deliver a truly immersive effects workstation. The pedal is centered around dual reverb engines that are independently programmable with full-stereo algorithms including Hall, Spring, Shimmer and more. Place these reverbs into a customizable signal path with additional FX blocks like Delay, Chorus, Tremolo, or Bit Crusher for a completely unique soundscape building experience.

Read MoreShow less

Our columnist’s silver-panel Fender Bandmaster.

How this longstanding, classic tube amp design evolved from its introduction in 1953.

Read MoreShow less