Hotone’s Freqlux runs three independent pitch voices at the same time, each with its own effects and its own position in the stereo field. PG Contributor Tom Butwin details the Tri-Pitch Engine, from polyphonic tracking and key aware harmony through to the Flux footswitch that turns the pedal into something you play rather than something you switch on.
Each voice gets assigned to one of five modes. ‘Poly’ handles polyphonic shifting that keeps chord structure intact. ‘Key’ generates harmonies that follow whatever key you set, though Tom makes the case for deliberately mismatching it. ‘Detune’ covers drop tunings and baritone territory, and with tracking at 4 to 5ms of latency it reads as a real tuning change rather than an effect. ‘ARP’ turns pitch into sequenced motion. ‘Mod’ steps away from pitch shifting and runs modulation instead. Every voice then carries its own effects and tone shaping, including drive, tremolo, chorus, delay, level and pan, which is where the stereo layouts come from. Tom builds one with crunch on the outer voices panned hard left and right and a clean voice down the middle.
The controls stay manageable despite the depth. Side buttons handle global routing and per effect editing, a knob scrolls through 200 preset slots, and the three top knobs map to the three voices. Holding both footswitches drops into Flux, where the right switch becomes a real time pitch controller for gliding shifts and arpeggiated movement. Auto Flux does the same thing from your picking dynamics instead of your foot. Connections cover stereo in and out, USB-C, MIDI in and out, and an expression pedal input, with free desktop editing software if you’d rather not dial everything in from the screen.
Freqlux Pitch-shift
Stereo Pitch-shift Guitar Pedal with H1, H2, H3, Preset, Mix, Select, Alt/Menu, and FX Controls, 3 Harmonized Voices, Delay, Modulation, Arpeggiator, MIDI, and USB
