Magick i employs a similar mechanism. But instead of setting the amount of gain reduction, the light controls the gain/distortion amount. Play louder, and the light flashes brightly, summoning more distortion. Play softer, and the distortion cleans up. Magick i’s controlling LED is internal, but a second LED serves as the pupil of the pedal’s eye graphic. It’s wired in parallel to the internal one, so you can observe its relative brightness while playing.
Something’s Different
Tech-savvy players may be scratching their heads at this point, thinking, “Hey, distortion and overdrives already behave that way! Play harder, and you get heavier distortion. Why complicate things with an LED/LDR circuit?”
My best answer is, “It just feels different.”
Optical compressors have slow response relative to newer, non-optical designs. That’s probably the main reason people still use them. Here, that means notes maintain strong, percussive attack, even at fairly heavy settings. But once the distortion kicks in, notes seem to breathe and pump.
Notes decay less quickly, and they maintain peak distortion (and peak brightness) for longer than usual. It feels at times like you’re playing through a compressor. Are you? It’s a bit of a chicken/egg question, since distortion, by nature, compresses.
Sculpture Studio
At maximum settings, Magick i coughs up a buzzy, full-frequency blat—an “ugly” sound that can work great in the right context. Yet the pedal can also be subtle, thanks to three tone-sculpting tools that compliment the expected gain and level controls.
There’s a bass-cut knob, situated upstream from the distortion portion of the circuit. But it doesn’t simply cut bass. Because low frequencies disproportionately drive distortion circuits, trimming bass changes the character of the distortion as well its frequency content. And you can get many useful tone variations via this knob alone.
Meanwhile, the treble-cut control is at the end of the circuit, where it can rein in that fierce treble response. Its range is relatively subtle—the pedal can still get squawky with the knob at its minimum position. But it can make the difference between “ouch” and “cool.”
Finally, a small switch toggles between 12-watt and 22-watt operation. The higher-wattage setting is louder and more distorted, but with a nice sense of clean headroom. (Despite the variable wattage, Magick i runs on standard 9-volt power. It has no battery compartment.)
Amp Imitator
The extra controls vastly expand Magick i’s range. In fact, it’s a pretty good “amp in a box,” as demonstrated in Doug Tuttle’s own demo video on his company’s website. The pedal’s treble energy is perfect for mimicking overheated tweeds. With both treble and bass pulled back, you get solid early Marshall sounds. You can dial in many characteristics here.
Ratings
Pros:A unique distortion/compression hybrid. Vast range of tones. Useful studio tool.
Cons:
Brightness may not appeal to some ears. Feel may not appeal to some hands.
Tones:
Ease of Use:
Build/Design:
Value:
Street:
$225
Mid-Fi Electronic Magick i
midfielectronics.com
Still, Magick i doesn’t do “transparent.” You can get much tonal variation by setting your guitar’s volume knob at various spots in the upper-third of its range. But even at low settings, it never truly cleans up like, say, a Fuzz Face or a Klon-style overdrive. And since both compression and distortion add noise, aggressive settings get noisy. I find the noise levels manageable, but if low noise is a key feature for you, proceed with caution.
Home Cookin’
Like all Mid-Fi pedals, Magick i has a funky, homemade appearance, “decorated” with roughly applied spray paint and willfully inconsistent lettering. The interior is equally homemade. There’s no printed circuit board—components are arranged on a piece of generic through-hole board like you’d find in a DIY pedal project.
Adhesive foam tape covers the board’s top and bottom, steadying the otherwise unsecured board and preventing shorts. But the components, wiring, and assembly are all perfectly solid, and there’s no reason to think Magick i will have a shorter lifespan than a pedal assembled by robots. Four medium-gain 2N3904 silicon transistors and a network of germanium and silicon diodes provide the crunch.
The Verdict
Whether or not you dig its tones, Magick i represents a spark of creativity in a cosmos of clones. Much of the pedal’s character stems from its feel— especially the way notes sustain and decay. It’s hard to describe but easy to perceive, so I recommend trying before buying. At subtle settings it can mimic amps and help you sculpt tones in useful and expressive ways. Crank it, though, and it shrieks.I suspect that some guitarists who primarily play at home alone will recoil from Magick i’s innate brightness, while players with recording, production, and performance experience will grasp the utility of the pedal’s strong note-attack and treble-rich tones.
As recently as the ’90s, amateur recording still relied on the 4-track cassette recorder. And though ambitious recordists could get great sounds out of 4-tracks, the intrinsic compressed nature of cassette tapes could lend an attractive, sometimes crackling roughness. When players upped the compression quotient by plugging their guitar directly into the 4-track’s mic preamp and cranked the gain, the resulting fuzz tones could be downright nasty. This lo-fi, overdriven mic preamp tone is what Mid-Fi Electronics is shooting for in the Demo Tape fuzz.
Tape Appeal
Dressed down with colorless, rough-hewn graphics and a cassette-like image—complete with chicken-scratched control names—the Demo Tape looks punk rock before you ever plug it in. The unit is powered via standard DC adapter and is true bypass. The controls include Bass, Treble, Volume, and Trim. The latter control, of course, was the key to sending tracks into the red on your average 4-track, and it’s just as vital here.
Tape Me Back
First things first: Just because the Mid-Fi unit specializes in the skuzzy sounds of a home-brewed punk cassette, it doesn’t mean there’s not a lot of other very cool fuzz sounds on tap. Dialing up a more typical fuzz tone with the Trim slightly above noon, the Treble slightly below noon, and a touch of Bass recalls no less than my recent vintage Germanium 4 Big Muff Pi with a little more compression, which is great for heavy rock leads and rhythm alike. The pedal is also extremely touch-sensitive at these settings and the response to input dynamics is amazingly expressive. The Volume control produces plenty of boost in the output too, allowing you to blend the Demo Tape’s overdrive with your amp’s own grit when you roll the Trim and Treble back.
At more extreme settings, however, you experience the unique sonic qualities that set this pedal apart. With the Demo Tape positioned between my Fender Strat and a silverface Fender Super Bassman, and the Trim knob turned up a little more aggressively, the Demo Tape’s distortion is a deliciously abrasive and highly compressed wall-o-fuzz. The Demo Tape can also get extremely bright, and rolling up the Treble will take you well beyond where most treble controls stop. This capability can be painful if you’re running your Stratocaster via the Demo Tape into a cranked Fender Twin Reverb. But used with care, it’s extremely useful for moving key instruments to the front of the mix and can add some killer ’60s garage-punk tones to your palate.
The Verdict
Running a guitar directly into a console preamp is a technique nearly as old as multitrack recording itself. But like the 4-track cassette itself, the sound of an overdriven cassette multitracker is an unjustly maligned and neglected tone. The Mid-Fi Demo Tape may not always perfectly nail the fizziest and most compressed aspects of that sound, but it certainly captures the spirit and a lot of the sonic payoff of that approach. It also delivers a lot of very usable and more conventional fuzz tones—a feat that should leave fuzz fans very impressed.
Buy if...
you’ve always wanted that grungy, lo-fi tone popular in the 1990s.
Skip if...
you never look back on the era of the cassette with fondness.
Rating...
Street $225 - Mid-Fi Electronics - midfielectronics.com |
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