SolidGold FX has given the time-honoured chorus/vibrato recipe a fresh twist with a built-in noise generator giving the NU-33 Vinyl Engine a range of lo-fi atmospherics to colour your modulation.
The chorus and vibrato is described as "warm and gooey" and you've got low and high-pass filters and three different waveforms to knock it into shape. Have it clean and precise, or run it dark, warbly and all kinds of weird.
There are two dual-purpose footswitches. The left footswitch operates as a tap tempo but if held down it'll offer a momentary speed ramping feature, while its counterpart on the right-hand side of the pedal engages/bypasses the effect or can be held down for a record skipping effect.
With six knobs aligned across the top of the pedal controlling Speed, Flutter, Ramp, Hiss, Blend and Level, and four toggle switches for selecting Wave, Skip, Color and Crackle, the NU-33 looks hugely configurable. This is definitely a pedal that'll invite experimentation.
Speed and Flutter operate the rate and depth of the modulation, but all is not what what it appears. If you set Flutter to the minimum setting the LFO movement is stopped altogether and you can use the NU-33 as a doubler with Speed adjusting the delay onset from 15ms to 50ms. Very cool.
Blend sets your wet/dry mix while Level is just that, controlling the output level of the unit. With Hiss you can dial in some vinyl noise and engineered pop and Ramp sets the rate for the ramping effect.
The NU-33 has top-mounted jacks to save space on the pedalboard, is true bypass, and has inputs for expression and CV control so you can adjust its parameters remotely. It takes a 9V DC power supply and draws about 60mA of current.
It is priced £245. See SolidGoldFX for more details.
