EHX Sitar Pedal

[Eric!]

Rice echos get me hard and I wish I could play a sitar. Salami Swami crossed my mind at first sight.

As shitty as their quality control can be at times (behnderroni HATES them for this), they really are quite commendably innovative at times.

[Alicetheenigma]

Oooooooh I want this

[CaptainWampum]

Oooooooh I want this

[ohsojayadeva]

Jrmz, this is DEFINITELY relative to my interests. Thanks!

[jrmy]

Jrmz, this is DEFINITELY relative to my interests. Thanks!

That's what I'm here for!

Well, that and trying to egg on HT and McSpunckle and occasionally post WTF? pics and get tons of GAS and look at B/S/T longingly...

[davedeath]

waiting for demo/video but this can be really fucking cool

[dubkitty]

given that it's EH, i figure that it may be great or it may be ungawdly awful, poorly-tracking garbagio, but it'll at least be interesting to hear.

[rbtr]

Since you asked for me… Here’s a little background on the Ravish.

LEAD VOICE
The LEAD voice will track your playing very well, if you play with a slide it will track it. Basically whatever you play on the guitar, the LEAD voice will make it sound like a sitar is playing it. The more your playing mimics how a Sitar player would actually play, the closer it will sound to a real sitar. You have control over the LEAD’s timbre, kind of like a tone control and its volume or level.

SYMPATHETIC DRONES - here’s where I try to answer Julian’s question
This is where the Ravish really begins to shine. As you play your guitar, the sympathetic strings start to resonate in whatever key you have chosen. Let’s start with E Major. No matter what you play, the sympathetics will ring out in E major. They will track your pitch a little bit, if you play lower notes, the sympathetics will resonate lower notes in the chosen key, if you play higher, the sympathetics will produce higher notes in that key. Minor mode does the same thing but in E minor instead of E major. The exotics scales we are still working on and are disabled on the units we sent to NAMM. If you were to play with a slide, within the given scale you have chosen, I think it would sound great. When playing your guitar more traditionally, in most situations, having a tuned guitar when playing along with the sympathetics, is essential. For the sympathetics you also have control over their Timbre and volume Level as well as a dedicated output just for the sympathetics so they can go to their own effects and amp if you want.

MORE ON SYMPATHETICS - both of the following functions require you to be in KEY mode
You can tune the sympathetics to your instrument. First you choose one of the three types of scales: Major, Minor or Exotic, then hold down the DRONE/TUNE FSW. You play one note, that note will set the root key of the sympathetic’s scale. If the guitar is a little out of tune, that’s ok, the Ravish will track to the tuning of the root note you play. So if you want to quickly change to F# major, as long as the Ravish is set to major, you press and hold down the TUNE FSW, then play an F#, now the sympathetics are in F#.

In addition you can input your own scales for the sympathetics strings. You press and hold the DRONE/TUNE FSW, then play each note you want the scale to contain. The Ravish will track each pitch and recreate it when the sympathetic strings ring out. If you then save a preset, your scale will be saved along with the all the other knob and parameter settings. If you only play just one note while holding down the DRONE/TUNE FSW, the Ravish retunes the currently selected scale to that note but if you play more than one note then it begins creating a new scale from the notes you play.

DRONE/TUNE FSW
This footswitch allows you to freeze the sympathetic strings if you press and hold the FSW, except when you are in KEY mode. While in KEY mode this FSW allows you to tune the sympathetic strings. If you press and release this FSW, it will load the current preset or move up to the next one.

I found this explanation on the EHX boards. I assume it's one of the guys who worked on it? Sounds neat! I'm sure you'd have to approach the guitar very differently with this pedal. I don't think that the sitar styled playing that I try to do would work all that well...but I'm still very anxious to hear this thing!

[Eric!]

well, shit, now I HAVE to try one out.

[coldbrightsunlight]

...That sounds like one of the greatest pedals ever. I bet I'd hardly ever use it for sitar sounds, but programming your own notes for a sympathetic drone which can go to its own effects chain? Shit.

[karmablock]

...That sounds like one of the greatest pedals ever. I bet I'd hardly ever use it for sitar sounds, but programming your own notes for a sympathetic drone which can go to its own effects chain? Shit.

I didn't think anything of this pedal 'til I read that. Hear comes the GAS.

[modernage]

given that it's EH, i figure that it may be great or it may be ungawdly awful, poorly-tracking garbagio, but it'll at least be interesting to hear.

In my experience the tracking with EHX pedals have usually been superior to comparable effects on the market. That's one thing they got right. Quality control on the other hand.......

I'm definitely interested to see if this pedal will end up in my possession one day.

[dubkitty]

i'm curious to see what the timbre is like. i needed a bass octave divider, and wound up getting an Octave Multiplexer rather than one of the POGs despite the greater skill set of the POGs because i just didn't care for the tone of the POGs, which was too metallic for my taste.

[CBGB]

could be amazing

[dubkitty]

the awesomeness of the sympathetics and the main signal into separate delay/reverb chains could be severe. i might never make it out of the house again.