Guitar gadget specialists FOMOfx has unveiled its next innovation, which its claims is set to “completely change how guitars are played forever.”
It’s a bold statement for the company that first came to attention last decade with the Virtual Jeff, a fully digital whammy bar that was compatible with both electrics and acoustics.
Launched at NAMM in 2016, it won the accolade of Best In Show that year. Five years later they updated it with the Virtual Jeff Pro (VJP), which with “low-stress mechanics, digital accuracy and intuitive control provided “luscious waggles, pitch-perfect bends, killer dive bombs and no tuning hassles.”
Now they’ve taken things up a notch with the vOL PRO pedal. This new gizmo works alongside the existing Virtual Jeff Pro setup, but switches up its functions. Instead of controlling pitch, the pedal enables you to use the whammy bar to control the volume. As a bonus, the pedal can also function as a clean boost pedal.
The VJP fits neatly onto your guitar and means you can simulate the functionality of the whammy bar without it actually being attached to the strings. However, the new vOL PRO takes this a step further and means you can create volume swells without even needing to touch the volume control. Plus if you use its blend function it gives you the ability to create dramatic new effects. Very neat.
The company claims it has “brought legacy tools into the 21st century with vOL PRO, an innovation that eliminates the mechanical and analogue limits of its predecessors.”
“And operation from the VJP arm on the guitar is much more intuitive than by foot, like the original devices.”
Founded in Australia by two guitar veterans, Peter Walker and Ian Moss, FOMOfx are carving out quite a niche for themselves. They claim that theirs is a “bold ‘over the horizon’ view (which) inspires the passion to replace legacy devices using radical re-design, sophisticated computer processing and patented technologies.”
With its second major upgrade in a decade you do wonder what further innovations FOMOfx could have up their sleeve? Could the digital whammy eventually be used to control the parameters of other effects, for example?
There’s no date as yet for the official launch of the vOL PRO, other than “soon”, according to the FOMOfx website. For more details have a look at www.fomofx.com
