The two-in-one “sonic refractor” takes tremolo and wavefolding to radical new depths.
Pros: Huge range of usable sounds. Delicious distortion tones. Broadens your conception of what guitar can be.
Build quirks will turn some users off.
$279
Cosmodio Gravity Well
cosmod.io
Know what a wavefolder does to your guitar signal? If you don’t, that’s okay. I didn’t either until I started messing around with the all-analog Cosmodio Instruments Gravity Well. It’s a dual-effect pedal with a tremolo and wavefolder, the latter more widely used in synthesis that , at a certain threshold, shifts or inverts the direction the wave is traveling—in essence, folding it upon itself. Used together here, they make up what Cosmodio calls a sonic refractor.
Two Plus One
Gravity Well’s design and control set make it a charm to use. Two footswitches engage tremolo and wavefolder independently, and one of three toggle switches swaps the order of the effects. The two 3-way switches toggle different tone and voice options, from darker and thicker to brighter and more aggressive. (Mixing and matching with these two toggles yields great results).
The wavefolder, which has an all-analog signal path bit a digitally controlled LFO, is controlled by knobs for both gain and volume, which provide enormous dynamic range. The LFO tremolo gets three knobs: speed, depth, and waveform. The first two are self-explanatory, but the latter offers switching between eight different tremolo waveforms. You’ll find standard sawtooth, triangle, square, and sine waves, but Cosmodio also included some wacko shapes: asymmetric swoop, ramp, sample and hold, and random. These weirder forms force truly weird relationships with the pedal, forcing your playing into increasingly unpredictable and bizarre territories.
This is all housed in a trippy, beautifully decorated Hammond 1590BB-sized enclosure, with in/out, expression pedal, and power jacks. I had concerns about the durability of the expression jack because it’s not sealed to its opening with an outer nut and washer, making it feel more susceptible to damage if a cable gets stepped on or jostled near the connection, as well as from moisture. After a look at the interior, though, the build seems sturdy as any I’ve seen.
Splatterhouse Audio
Cosmodio’s claim that the refractor is a “first-of-its-kind” modulation effect is pretty grand, but wavefolders are rare-ish in the guitar domain and pairing it with tremolo creates some pretty foreign sounds. Barton McGuire, the Massachusetts-based builder behind Cosmodio, released a few videos that demonstrate, visually, how a wavefolder impacts your guitar’s signal—I highly suggest checking them out to understand some of the principles behind the effect (and to see an ’80s Muppet Babies-branded keyboard in action).
By folding a waveform back on itself, rather than clipping it as a conventional distortion would, the wavefolder section produces colliding, reflecting overtones and harmonics. The resulting distortion is unique: It can sound lo-fi and broken in the low- to mid-gain range, or synthy and extraterrestrial when the gain is dimed. Add in the tremolo, and you’ve got a lot of sonic variables to play with.
Used independently, the tremolo effect is great, but the wavefolder is where the real fun is. With the gain at 12 o’clock, it mimics a vintage 1x10 tube amp cranked to the breaking point by a splatty germanium OD. A soft touch cleans up the signal really nicely, while maintaining the weirdness the wavefolder imparts to its signal. With forceful pick strokes at high gain, it functions like a unique fuzz-distortion hybrid with bizarre alien artifacts punching through the synthy goop.
One forum commenter suggested that the Gravity Well effect is often in charge as much the guitar itself, and that’s spot on at the pedal’s extremes. Whatever you expect from your usual playing techniques tends to go out the window —generating instead crumbling, sputtering bursts of blubbering sound. Learning to respond to the pedal in these environments can redefine the guitar as an instrument, and that’s a big part of Gravity Well’s magic.
The Verdict
Gravity Well is the most fun I’ve had with a modulation pedal in a while. It strikes a brilliant balance between adventurous and useful, with a broad range of LFO modulations and a totally excellent oddball distortion. The combination of the two effects yields some of the coolest sounds I’ve heard from an electric guitar, and at $279, it’s a very reasonably priced journey to deeply inspiring corners you probably never expected your 6-string (or bass, or drums, or Muppet Babies Casio EP-10) to lead you to.
Cosmodio Instruments, a new effect pedal and electronic musical instrument manufacturer based in Massachusetts, has launched its first product: the Pet Yeti distortion and fuzz pedal.
The Pet Yeti is an all-analog distortion machine designed to offer a massive variety of distortion sounds that can range from refined to extreme and even bizarre. It delivers a completely novel design, not based on any pre-existing circuit or pedal archetype, and offers musicians a fresh take on distortion and fuzz. It’s purpose-built for use with any instrument and excels at processing not only electric guitars, but also bass guitars, drum machines, acoustic-electric stringed instruments, and synthesizers.
The Pet Yeti’s distortion capabilities include an expansive gain range with cascading gain stages, selectable clipping configurations (including symmetrical, asymmetrical, silicon, germanium, and op-amp clipping), and an analog bit crusher. The pedal’s five-knob control set includes Gain and output Level knobs; a Shape knob for controlling pre-distortion low-end; and a Tone knob for adjusting post-distortion EQ. It also offers a Clean knob for controlling a parallel unmodified signal path that can be independently mixed into the output signal. This Clean blend allows for layered, multi-dimensional tones, and retains low-end and crystalline transients that are critical to instruments like bass and percussion.
The Pet Yeti’s tone sculpting capabilities are enhanced by three toggle switches:
- “Voice” selects between three different clipping configurations – essentially different flavors of distortion and tone.
- “Bite” activates/deactivates the analog bit crusher, which smashes your signal into a square wave to provide some of the most extreme hard clipping and gating physically possible. At lower gain settings this produces fun gated lo-fi video game-like tones. At high gain settings, it becomes a searing torrent of extreme blown-out fuzztortion.
- “Strength” controls the first gain stage which boosts the input signal to determine how hard to hit the main gain stage. Choose “Lo” for more headroom, “Hi” for more breakup,“Max” for all-out mayhem.
The Pet Yeti is approachable and easy to use, despite its advanced feature set. Its carefully spaced control layout is optimized for easy spontaneous adjustments. Its top-mounted input, output, and power jacks ensure an efficient footprint on a pedalboard or desktop. You can choose between two color schemes: “Neon Nuclear Wasteland” and “Dark Doomy Deathscape” featuring stunning faceplate artwork by accomplished pop-artist GOLDSUIT.
Pet Yeti features include:
- True bypass switching
- 9-volt operation via external power supply - no battery compartment
- Built in USA
The Pet Yeti carries a $219 street price.
For more information, please visit cosmod.io.
