Running two effects of the same kind concurrently can yield amazing results. Stacked fuzzes or RATs? I’m in heaven. Other effects work less reliably well in pairs. Two reverbs, for instance, can sound killer but can turn an otherwise carefully crafted signal to smog. Twin phasers, in my experience, can be counted among the effects that are delicious together. It takes just two simple one-knob phasers to get very weird. Build two phasers into one, though, and add a few extra tone shaping controls, and the weird gets weirder fast.
Keeley’s new U.S.-made, digital Oaxa twin phaser can feel nearly as simple and straight ahead as two Small Stones running side by side, and honors the elegance and ease of that solution in many ways. There’s just three knobs—for rate, feedback, and depth. A small 3-position toggle switches between 10-stage phase, 4-stage phase, and a Uni-Vibe-style mode. Two footswitches select between the individual phaser or a combination of the two. If you want to keep things simple, you can dive in no further than that and have a great time. But Oaxa bears many secrets for deeper diggers.
Working the Waves
The phase effect is fun to use intuitively. And adding it in and out can be low stakes. Feeling that a riff sounds lifeless? Add a phaser and twist the rate. Maybe it’ll be exactly what a song needs. Maybe it will sit like rotten mayonnaise. But it won’t have taken much effort to try, and you’ll probably have fun along the way. The Oaxa is deeply satisfying in this manner.
The brilliant, big rate knob can be adjusted with precision using just a toe (provided you have the right shoes). And while the depth and feedback controls might be an affront to Phase 90 and Small Stone users, Oaxa’s controls open up useful phase possibilities without leaving you feeling doomed to get lost in the weeds. The depth control, for instance, has so much range it can render the phaser all but subliminal—making it a killer always-on sweetener that can be nudged in and out of prominence via the depth knob. Those just-barely-there depth settings can also be subtly re-shaped by the similarly rangey feedback control, which acts like a filter, adding wah-like focus at mild depth. At more intense depths, the feedback adds appreciably more vowelly “wow” tonalities that give Oaxa more than a hint of a Mu-Tron’s beautiful vintage essence. This variation—and interactivity—among depth and feedback colors alone makes Oaxa a great production, arrangement, and guitar layering tool, particularly in spacious arrangements.
Bear in mind that all the phase phenomena I’ve described here were observed in the 4-stage phaser voice—my most natural and familiar phase space. But the 3-way toggle can also be configured for 10-stage voicing or as a Uni-Vibe-style phase effect. The 10-stage voice is a little more binary than the 4-stage, and can obscure some overtone nuance in the wash. At extreme depth settings it can even sound almost tremolo-like. For a lot of players, the more focused modulation waves in the 10-stage voice will be a perfect fit for rhythmic delays or staccato passages begging for a little extra wobble and a more interesting tail. The Uni-Vibe style setting, meanwhile, is a pretty authentic version of the effect and delivers a recognizable take on the drippy “whoop”-like phase created by a Uni-Vibe’s optical circuit. Like the real deal, it sounds fantastic with fuzz.
Multiplied by Two ... and More
When both phasers are on, Oaxa’s jewel lamp flashes blue and red, and the visual suggestion of a party is apt. There are deep and crazy sounds here that can take you deep into the wee hours. But not all combinations are magic. Certain pairings of modulation rate and harmonic peaks can obscure details that might make a single phase voice pleasing. But the option to run the two phasers in parallel or series enables more or less detailed versions of a compound phaser voice, respectively. And just-right phase-rate relationships combined with contrasting voices, depth, and feedback can yield fantastic results. Fast-throbbing U-Vibe style modulations combined with slow, deep 4-stage phases are extra dimensional—as are just about any two high-contrast rates. Nailing these combinations and hearing them via stereo—the other great force multiplier on Oaxa—can pull you deeper still into the pedal’s capacities.
The Verdict
Do you remember what I said at the top about the Oaxa being simple? It’s true. It’s just that Oaxa’s elegant design also has a lot in store for troublemakers willing to dig a bit. And if the stereo and dual-phase settings aren’t trouble enough, you can use the footswitches and knobs to introduce compression or extra filtering, or reconfigure the toggle to include 2- and 6-stage phaser voices. I’d venture that using the most basic functions will make the $199 price well worth it over time. But you’ll likely celebrate the day you stumble across one of Oaxa’s more complex finds. I suspect such days will be many in number, too.
Any effect can color a guitar’s personality and language. But Boss’ new XS-1 Poly Shifter literally stretches the instrument’s vocal range. With the ability to shift input by +/-3 octaves or semitones, it can turn your guitar into a bass, a synth, or a baritone, or function as a capo. It also seamlessly generates harmonies for single note leads and keeps up with quick picking without any apparent latency. Furthermore, the pedal is capable of stranger fare that stokes many out-of-the-box ideas. But if you’re a guitarist that plays more than one role in your band—or musical life in general—the XS-1 can be a utilitarian multitool, too. It’s a pedal that can live many lives.
- YouTube
The XS-1, which was released alongside its bigger, more intricate sibling, the XS-100, is an accessible route to exploring pitch shifting’s potential. Housed in a standard Boss enclosure, it doesn’t consume a lot of floor space like the XS-100 or DigiTech’s Whammy. And while it achieves this spatial economy in part by forgoing a built-in expression pedal (which could be a deal breaker for some potential customers) it’s still capable of +/- seven semitones and a +/- three-octave range that can be utilized in momentary or latching applications.
Slipping, Sliding, and Twitching
Though digital pitch shifters have always been capable of amazing things, early ones sounded very inorganic at times. High-octave sounds in particular could come across as artificial, like the yip of a robot chihuahua plagued by metal fleas. Some very creative players use these colors—as well as the most sonorous pitch shift tones—to great effect (Nels Cline and Johnny Greenwood’s alien tonalities come to mind). In other settings, though, these older pitch devices can be downright cringey.
“The pedal clearly represents several leaps forward from first-generation pitch shifters.”
The XS-1 belies digitalness in some octave-up situations. But the pedal clearly represents several leaps forward from first-generation pitch shifters. Tracking is excellent and shines in string bending situations. Semitone shifts can provide focused harmony or provocative dissonance depending on the wet/dry mix and which semitones clash or sing against the dry signal. At many settings the XS-1 feels alive and organic, too, with legato lines taking on many of the touch characteristics of a violin-family instrument. You get far less of a note-to-note “hiccup,” and glissandos take on a beautifully fluid feel—with or without a slide—letting the XS-1 deliver convincing pedal- and lap-steel-style textures when you add a single octave up. (Such applications sound especially convincing when you kick back on guitar tone and restrict your fretwork to the 3rd through 5th strings, which keeps digital artifacts at bay.)
Mixmaster Required
The most crucial XS-1 control is the mix. For the most convincing bass, baritone, and 12-string tones, you’ll want a fully wet signal. But composite sounds can be awesome, too. You can use the control’s excellent sensitivity and range to highlight or fine tune the prominence of a consonant harmony. But it’s sensitive enough to make blends with dissonant harmonies sound a lot more intentional and integrated. And many of these eerie, wonky, off-balance textures are extra effective when introduced in quick bursts via the momentary switch. (That switch can also deliver great flashes of drama with more consonant harmonies—like dropping in a 3rd or 5th above a resolving chord in a verse.)
You can get creative in other ways using dissonant blends. Droney open tunings can yield fields of overtones that sound extra fascinating with delay, reverb, or 12-string guitar… or all of them! Dialing in blends that really work takes some trial and error, and you’ll definitely hit a few awkward moments if you’re navigating by instinct alone. But those same experiments often uncover real gems—especially in the pitch-down modes, which tend to produce more mysteriously atmospheric textures than their pitch-up counterparts.
The Verdict
Boss’ most straightforward pitch shifter covers a lot of ground. If you play in a duo, trio, or small band, it can expand that collective’s stylistic and harmonic range. It’s small, at least relative to treadle-equipped pitch shifters, so if you’re not a pitch shift power user, you don’t sacrifice a lot of room for an effect you might only employ occasionally, and you can still use the expression pedal jack to hook up a pedal for dynamic pitch control. The $199 price puts it in line with competitors of similar size and feature sets, but the XS-1 is a great value compared to more elaborate, treadle-equipped pitch shifters. If you’re taking your first forays into pitch shifting, or know that you need only the most straightforward functions here, it will ably return the investment. And along the way, it might even unlock a whole cache of unexpected tonal discoveries.
Most people think of samplers as drum machines with delusions of grandeur—four-bar loops, predictable patterns, and neatly sliced bits living forever in the prison of the grid. But for me, samplers and loopers are something completely different. They’re instruments of disruption. They’re creative accelerants. They’re circuit breakers designed to shock me out of my comfort zone and force my compositions, productions, and performances into strange, exhilarating new shapes.
One of my favorite studio practices—and something I encourage my Recording Dojo readers to experiment with—is to sample your performances. Not a preset library, not a pack from somebody else, but use your own melodic lines, motifs, rhythms, textures, and half-formed ideas. There’s something magical about hearing your own musical DNA come back to you in an unfamiliar, mutated form. It’s like collaborating with a version of yourself from an alternate timeline.
The real thrill isn’t about capturing pristine performances. In fact, it’s often the opposite: I’ll grab a phrase that’s imperfect, or mid-gesture, or harmonically unresolved, and drop it into a sampler purely to see what it becomes. When you do this, your musical habits—your well-worn licks, default rhythms, and predictable choices—don’t stand a chance. The sampler shreds them, recontextualizes them, and hands them back as raw material for re-writing, re-arranging, or composing something that never would have emerged in a linear workflow.
Sometimes the transformation is subtle—a lick becomes a rhythmic ostinato, a sustain becomes a pad, a passing tone becomes a focal point. Other times the sampler just mangles it, spits it out sideways, and you think, ‘Oh… now that’s interesting.’ Either way, it becomes a tool for breaking patterns, both musically and psychologically.
My Process: Mutations, Not Replications
My approach to sampling isn’t any more complicated than anyone else’s. I’m not using some secret, elite technique. I’m simply collecting fragments—little melodic cells, rhythmic quirks, harmonic gestures—and giving them permission to misbehave.
I’ll chop up key licks into uneven slices, or isolate just the back half of a phrase, or extract a rhythmic hiccup that wouldn’t survive in a normal editing session. Then I reassemble these bits with the expectation that they won’t behave. I want mutations. I want the musical equivalent of genetic drift. I’m not trying to color within the lines; I’m trying to see what happens when I throw the coloring book across the room.
Once the sampler gives me something intriguing, I run these new creatures through chains of further processing: glitch delays that stutter and fold the sound into origami-like shapes, micro-loopers feeding into overdrives or fuzz pedals, shimmering reverbs that stretch a 200-millisecond blip into a widescreen texture. The result can be anything from a ghostly sustained pad to a snarling, percussive accent, to a completely alien harmonic bed.
You can use these elements as alternate melodic lines, counterpoint, ambient beds, transitions, ear candy, or even structural material for entire songs. And because the source is you, the end result stays connected to your musical identity—just bent, twisted, and refracted into something fresh.
Outcome Independence: The Spirit Behind the Process
If there’s one thing that makes this approach powerful, it’s letting go of the expectation that what you sample must “work.” This is pure experimentation, not product-driven crafting.
I’m outcome-independent when I do this. I’m not looking for a result so much as engaging in the joy of the unknown. Some days nothing meaningful emerges. Other days I strike gold. But either way, the process sharpens my creative instincts. It keeps me curious.
“There's something magical about hearing your own musical DNA come back to you in an unfamiliar, mutated form.”
I use this same strategy when producing artists or working on film and soundtrack material. Recently, I applied it to pedal steel—an instrument known for its lyrical beauty—and the resulting textures were … well, not beautiful in the traditional sense. They were fractured, shadowy, almost Jekyll-and-Hyde. Perfect for a track built around the duality of personality. The clients absolutely loved the unpredictable, emotive soundscape those mutated pedal steel lines created.
Some Favorite Tools for Sonic Mutation
You don’t need a million pieces of gear to do this. A single sampler and a single effects chain can take you far. But here are a few of my favorite “chaos engines,” all of which I own and use regularly:
• Teenage Engineering OP-1 Field – A sampler, synth, tape machine, and chaos generator disguised as a minimalist art object. Its sampling engine and tape modes are perfect for tonal mutations.
• Teenage Engineering EP-133 K.O. II – A quick, dirty, wonderfully immediate sampler for slicing, punching, and recombining your ideas without overthinking.
• Omnisphere 3 – The granular engine alone is a goldmine for turning simple samples into cinematic, evolving textures.
• NI Maschine – Still one of the fastest environments for grabbing a sound, flipping it, and building an idea around the unexpected.
• …and whatever else you have lying around. The point is exploration, not allegiance to any one workflow.
Final Thoughts
Sampling your own voice as an instrumentalist—and then breaking it—reminds you that creativity doesn’t live in the safe, predictable spaces. It lives in the moments where you lose control just enough to discover something new. Give your sampler permission to surprise you, confuse you, and sometimes even challenge your sense of what you sound like. That’s where the good stuff begins.
Connecticut builder Josh Forest’s TreeTone Guitars specializes in retro-inspired designs with hip offset bodies, classic inspired color combos, and an array of electronic options. He’s teamed up with Orangewood to offer an imported version of his Del Sol model—which he produces in a standard-tuning version under his own name—as a baritone. Although the Orangewood Del Sol Baritone hits a price point well below a domestic build, it’s a solidly crafted, handsome guitar that punches well above its $795 tag.
Comfy Feels
The Del Sol Baritone’s slick, unique offset mahogany body evokes retro Fender vibes, but on its own terms. It’s a sleek look, and thanks to its chambered design—with a bass-side f-hole—it’s lightweight.
Playing while seated, the bari has a nice weight distribution and offers a comfortable playing experience. Its 27 1/2" scale length is close enough to a standard scale to feel familiar, giving it a more guitar-like feel than, say, a Danelectro’s 29 3/4" scale or a Bass VI’s 30", which makes it easy to get acquainted with.
Without checking price data first, I guessed it was priced a few hundred bucks above its $795 cost direct from Orangewood.”
A pair of P-90s sit nicely in the 3-ply parchment pickguard. Controls include a master volume and tone with pickup selector, plus a phase switch. Characteristically, the P-90s tend toward warmth more than clarity, but together they have a wide range, from bridge-position twang to thick neck tones. They certainly lean dark, and digging in will push their output enough to drive the amp if you’re already heading in that direction. That’s particularly the case with the neck pickup, though tamping down the bass control on my Deluxe Reverb helped keep it cleaner longer. But the P-90s performed great once overdriven, whether from the amp or with the help of a dirt box, with plenty of sonic space for well-articulated arpeggios and dynamic strumming. I preferred the middle position most, and the phase switch—located on a brushed aluminum control plate between the volume and tone knobs—opens up the possibilities. It’s a helpful control, especially for navigating bass response and finding the line between heaviness and twang.
Jack of All Trades
The Del Sol’s roasted maple neck has a smooth satin finish and a soft C profile. Combined with the 12" radius on its rosewood fretboard, the neck feels great. A rounded heel offers easy access to the upper frets, and has a spoke wheel for truss rod adjustment, which I always find to be a thoughtful and welcome feature. The 43 mm nut width feels naturally spaced for the .013–.072 strings that come stock.
As far as build quality goes, my demo model arrived set up and ready to go. The frets are even and nicely dressed across the neck, and seem to have received a fine level of attention. In fact, from top to bottom, the Del Sol’s build is flawless. Without checking price data first, I guessed it was priced a few hundred bucks above its $795 cost direct from Orangewood.
Though its offset aesthetic gives a bit of a surfy vibe, the Del Sol Baritone is more of a rocker—though I suspect replacing the Tune-o-matic-style bridge with a JM-style vibrato could push it in the former direction. It’s definitely capable of heavier sounds and plays well with distortion. The resonance of the chambered body lends some sustain across its range, and that helps this bari sing. The easy playability of the neck and fretboard open it up to all styles, and knotty, technical passages are easy to execute. That makes the Del Sol a specifically versatile instrument. The other side of versatility, though, is that if you’re looking for specialized sounds—let’s say a Dano-with-lipstick-pickup kind of thing, or a tic tac bass sound—you might not find it. But as a do-it-all baritone under $1,000, the Del Sol is one to consider.
The Verdict
The Orangewood brand model delivers attention to detail in cool aesthetic packages at easy-to-reach prices. Yes, there are less expensive baritones than the Del Sol on the market. But many of those cater toward more specific, if not a bit quirky, tastes. Instead, the Del Sol Baritone can cover a breadth of stylistic ground both sonically and, thanks to its easy playability, from a technical perspective. With a build quality that’s more consistent with a higher price point, it delivers both musical and financial value. If you want a well-rounded bari, this may be all you’ll ever need.
An all-analog flange and chorus with a lot of character.
Way back in the 2010s, before starting Mr. Black as his pedal-building outlet, when Jack DeVille was releasing effects under his own name, he created the Mod Zero. This multi-modulation unit covered flanging, chorus, rotary effects, and vibrato, and, with a limited run of 250 units, gained a reputation and is long sold out.
Although Mr. Black’s Mod.One is not that pedal, this all-original unit designed by DeVille follows a similar mission, and its reverential name is surely no accident. The Mod.One is a 100-percent-analog modulator that spans chorus, flange, and high-band flange with a unique control set designed for flexibility, sonic excitement, options and a lot of character.
Controls for the Curious
If you come to the Mod.One a little fuzzy on the differences between chorus and flange, here’s a brief explanation: Chorus is created using a slower set of delay times on a secondary, parallel signal. Flange uses shorter delay times, and high-band flange the shortest. On the Mod.One, a pair of knobs—one for lower limit and one for upper limit—allow users to set that range of delay times. The lower limit knob has a max delay of 31 mS and a minimum delay of 1.9 ms. The upper limit knob ranges from 1.9 ms to .5 ms. Within those ranges, you’ll find the difference between chorus and flanging, and the position of the two knobs, rather than a switch, determines which effect you’re using. Ultimately, I’m a firm believer that we should use our ears and not get hung up on definitions when listening to an effect. The Mod.One is a great example. Determining exact delay times and whether you’re chorusing or flanging is inexact but ultimately it doesn’t matter. What matters is what sounds good.
The lower limit/upper limit controls might frustrate purists that want to toggle between a clearly defined chorus and flange tone. But Mod.One’s controls, and its central premise, are all about sound sculpting and opening up creative options. And options abound: LFO speed, for example, reaches up to 20 seconds long when using the tap-tempo switch. Six waveform options also widen the sonic lane.
Let’s Get Exponential
The Mod.One is powerful in a literal sense. The active volume control provides plenty of juice, and is capable of really pushing whatever comes next in your chain. That lends a gooey vibe to everything that passes through the pedal. Whether you use that power to drive your amp or not, the combo of gain and all-analog circuitry give the Mod.One a warm, thick voice. This is not just another metallic-sounding flange device.
I found myself stomping on the Mod.One to add space and texture to rhythms, riffs, and leads that cover a lot of range. Sometimes, I was looking for subtlety—Andy Summers on “Walking on the Moon,” for example. For that, I kept the enhance knob, which determines the intensity of the effect, toward lower settings, and kept the speed on the slowest part of its range, which generates molasses-like movement. For more obvious results, I nudged the speed and enhance knobs. There’s a lot of play in each control, so it doesn’t take much to get things moving in a different direction. The enhance control can even self-oscillate at the top of its range, where more extreme sounds live.
Each of these controls interacts differently with alternate waveform settings, making the possibilities exponential. If there’s one complaint I have about the Mod.One—and I do think it’s just one—it’s that it’s hard to tell which waveform is selected. When experimenting by ear, that’s not the worst thing, but when searching for specific settings, it can be hard to tell if the single LED lights up in a sine, triangle, or other pattern. Eventually I got better at telling the difference, but I didn’t always nail it.
To get some ’70s pseudo-cosmiche tones for a recording project, I rocked the triangle, sine, and hypertriangle waveforms at varying levels of excess. And all three were useful for thickening up high-fretted chordage rather than just the crystalline kind of flange I tend to associate with Prince. I found true excess with the step wave selected and the enhance cranked to its fullest, and there are many experimental sounds to be heard in these wilder places. With so many variables at play, I know there is a lot to be discovered still, which makes the Mod.One compelling.
The Verdict
The Mod.One is a powerful flange and chorus with a strong, recognizable character and wide range. It’s not a do-it-all kind of modulator meant to compete with digital units. But this all-analog device can deliver texture to your sound at dosages that are easily controlled. The unique sculpting possibilities make it exciting and refreshing, and in my time with the pedal, I was impressed with how much I hadn’t yet discovered. It strikes a difficult balance between a quick learning curve and the kind of depth that’ll keep it in heavy rotation for a long time to come. It simply sounds excellent, too.