Effector 13 Soda Meiser

$130

www.effector13.com

Effector 13 has long been known as a maker of inventive, unique effect pedals that go beyond the conventional ones available from mainstream pedal manufacturers. Though largely designed for guitars, many of Effector 13's pedals are perfect for the electronic musician who wants to capture wild sounds using hardware. The new Soda Meiser is a combination of two older Effector 13 boxes: the Vintage Fuzz Master's "smooth" setting and the utterly inexplicable No-Fi Chaos. Deceptively simple, the Soda Meiser has just two knobs—volume and intensity—a true bypass stomp switch, and a switch to flip between the two modes. Depending on which setting this latter switch is in, the intensity knob does some very different things.

Effector 13 has particularly targeted the Soda Meiser to be used with guitar (naturally, for a fuzzbox effect) and synthesizers. Once I got a chance to try out the pedal with a Synthesizers.com modular synthesizer, it became obvious why. On the toggle switch's lower setting, the Soda Meiser has a vintage fuzz sound that sparkles and crackles and adds grit to even the cleanest sine-wave signal. The Vintage Fuzz setting is truly the star of this pedal, with its simple workings and incredibly powerful sound.

At the lowest intensity settings, the VFM adds the barest bit of edge and bite to the input signal, spitting out a vicious blurt of sound. As higher settings are dialed in, the middle range yields a traditional heavy distortion sound, with layers of overdriven fuzz really pushing the signal out front. These are, certainly, the settings most likely to be explored by melodic artists, as the fuzz adds harmonic complexity and drive to any sound. Dialing the intensity knob around in this region yields subtly shifting harmonics layered on top of the source sound. The highest intensity settings, the signal can be almost entirely fuzzed out beneath a willowy stream of crackling noise that is still, oddly, harmonic and strangely pleasant.

So the fuzz is, undoubtedly, worth the price of the pedal alone. With a range of settings that vary from the conventionally useful to the truly out-there, virtually any artist in any style could find a way to apply this pedal. But all this is without even exploring the odd world of the No-Fi Chaos setting, which adds a further range of destructive, strange sounds to the Soda Meiser. Whereas the Vintage Fuzz was clearly designed to be a warm, melodically oriented distortion, the No-Fi Chaos is much less predictable, dirtier, and much, much weirder. For one thing, this setting seems purposefully designed to avoid easy description—there's no hint anywhere from Effector 13 as to what exact effect this setting has on a signal, and it's not all that easy to tell simply from listening, either. On the Vintage Fuzz setting, the intensity knob causes continuous, predictable changes as it is turned from left to right; not so when in Chaos mode.

Rather, the intensity knob in this mode seems to have certain "sweet spots" that change depending on what the original sound is—some parts of the spectrum can have a very minimal fuzz effect, while others will chop up and spit out messed-up chunks of brutal sound distorted beyond all recognition. It can add a crunchy low-end crackle, or just a willowy upper-register sizzle, or it can entirely mangle the sound and bury it beneath an appropriately chaotic bath of pure noise. Sometimes it boosts the signal into a towering wall of sound, other times it sucks the volume down to a weak stream of warped noise. It's meant to be insane and random, and it entirely fulfills its purpose. The randomness of it all makes it less than useful as far as duplicating sounds goes—this setting has sounded different every time I've used it—but in other contexts this is more of an asset than a failing. It takes far longer to get useful sounds in No-Fi mode than when using the Vintage Fuzz, but it's still an excellent addition for its incredible value as a tool for experimentation and simply getting wild sounds.

The Soda Meiser is a great pedal for anyone interested in adding a dirty fuzz edge to his or her sound, and the effect's additional capacity for crazy randomized noise should be viewed as a compelling bonus feature. In addition to the standard version reviewed here, Effector 13 also makes a Plus version where the mode switch is a standard stomp switch to make mode switching easier in live performance. There's also the Truly Beautiful Soda Meiser, which adds a photoelectric eye that controls a feedback loop for further sonic destruction.

Ed Howard