Mythos Pedals has made its modulation debut with the launch of The Fates, a bucket bridage analogue chorus pedal inspired by vintage Japanese pedalboard candy.
The star of the show here – though it’s a close run thing with the clean two-knob design and super-tough enclosure – is the MN3207 BBD chip, which is sure to warm the hard of even the coldest of analogue circuit nerds.
But just let that do its thing, where it needs to be, while the rest of the pedal presents itself to players as a super-straightforward way of accessing some heady, swirly, three-dimensional chorusing.
All you have are two large black chickenhead knobs for Rate and Depth. Rate controls the speed of the LFO. The Depth controls, well, the depth, and just how wide and pronounced you want that modulation.
With the toggle switch in Chorus mode, it behaves like a chorus. In Vibrato, it takes out the clean signal, but Mythos has tweaked this vibrato setting so that you won’t get to extreme warble on the Depth control. Indeed, Mythos describes the range of sounds as running “the gamut of swirly shimmer to rotary speaker like vibes”.
In other words, it’s a chorus/vibrato but like all good modulation units it can cover a lot of ground without complicating things. This is part of the charm of these old-school style units. What you lose in exacting control over every single detail of your electric guitar tone, you gain in convenience.
“This Analog Chorus is not for those who want presets, infinite controls, and other modern feature sets,” says Mythos. “The Fates is for the player who wants to plug in and enjoy the simplicity of iconic Chorus tones with ease.”
Mythos also takes you under the hood for a little more information about how its circuit works. The Fates has a JFET buffered bypass input stage that not only makes the pedal run quieter but pushes the signal for a “sweet output bump and EQ voicing” that will be suited to super-clean or overdriven guitar sounds.
The LED is worth keeping an eye on, too. When the pedal is activated, it will pulse in time with how you’ve set the Rate knob – so if it’s going to go ray-gun wobble on you with the Rate knob dimed, you’ll see it before you hear it.
And that is it. Stick it on your ‘board, feed it 9V DC from a pedalboard power supply, and it’ll draw 19mA. The Fates will cost you £184 / $229, and it is available now. Just head over to Mythos Pedals.
