KHDK Electronics has expanded its lineup of signature guitar effects pedals with the Digital Bath, a delay pedal designed in collaboration with Deftones frontman Chino Moreno.
Named after the one of the standout tracks on the Sacramento post-metallers’ third album, White Pony track – and painted in a similar shade of grey to the album’s cover art – Digital Bath is an analogue delay with filter modulation that is designed to not only give you that same lush electric guitar tone you hear on the record, but also for those occasions when you want to “dissolve your guitar signal into waves of dreamy textures and hypnotic echoes”.
And who doesn't want to do that from time to time? Digital Bath is something different for KHDK, a change of pace. We are used to seeing a range of overdrive pedals, high-gain preamps designed with the likes of Gary Holt and Zacky Vengeance – remember that limited edition boost and preamp twofer for Anthrax’s Scott Ian? We were big fans of the Gojira Drive.
Digital Bath is a much more gentle pedalboard proposition. Look elsewhere for your gain source. But just think how it could be used. How Moreno might use it. And he has – it has been road-tested, with the Deftones frontman using it during the band’s recent tour and Coachella dates.
We called Deftones post-metal. They emerged out of the nu-metal scene. But it’s Deftones; they sound like Deftones, and there’s a lot of room for soft-focus repeats, sounds that are adjacent to or overlapping with shoegaze. This will do all that and more.
KHDK’s David Koren says it is the first pedal design to give you that Digital Bath sound, and it didn’t come easy.
“Digital Bath is the most complex pedal we have ever developed,” he says. “It took us nearly two years to get it absolutely perfect.”
Koren has done the hard part. For us, this looks like a relatively straightforward control setup. There are four knobs, two plus a Depth switch for the filter section, two for the delay. The filter is controlled by the rate and mix knobs. The toggle switch adjusts the depth of the modulation.
The delay is controlled by the mix and a time knobs, with your maximum delay time set at 400ms.
Koren and Moreno have, however, stashed some secret controls inside the enclosure – set and forget slide switches that allow you to take your dry signal out of the equation completely, which KHDK says is “perfect for parallel FX loops or experimental routing. There is also an internal trimmer that adjusts the delay feedback, from “brief whispers to cascading loops”.
The first 150 units shipped with a COA signed by Moreno, but have sadly sold out. But you can still send your guitar tone for a Digital Bath with the pedal shipping now, priced $249. See KHDK Electronics for more.
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