Playing Mantis (GAS)

[the_bright_undead]

I recently picked up a Fuzzrocious Playing Mantis on a whim after letting go of a Twin Bender. Anyone tried out this little monster?

My first impressions were that the oscillator was close to unusable, but after plugging in an expression pedal to shift the pitch, and running it through some extra modulation (Freeze, phasor, delay, some plate reverb, and a looper), I've become obsessed with this new noise machine that no other pedal on my board really comes close to.

Also, super PISSED because I thought I had found the permanent solution to all dirt boxes with a Plumes / Black Forest / Algal Bloom arrangement. But the distortion on the Playing Mantis really sounds fantastic and now I can't stop using it. It doesn't stack too well with any of my current dirt, and it's not getting the deep crunch the Plumes/Black Forest combo gets me, but there's something great about it none the less, it has a sort of sweet sound to it if that makes any sense for a distortion pedal.

The drive is a bit too trebly for me.....Boost works great, although I'm not sure I'll use it.

Does anyone know what the distortion circuit is based on? I'm less adept than many here in terms of opening up a box and knowing whats making that sound happen. It's less aggressive than a TS, more open and sweet-sounding, but also somehow it's a little fuzzier than my Black Forest.

Anyway I'm super impressed with this pedal, my only real critique is that the oscillator can't be controlled in terms of volume unless you run a volume pedal right after it. But that's pretty easy to fix.

[Fuzzrociouspedals]

Glad you found some thing to like about Playing Mantis.
The boost/drive/distortion section is a step up from our Ram The Manparts which is an abuse/use of the LM386 power amp.
If you want to control the volume of the oscillator, use the "oscillator volume" knob (far left). You can adjust the internal trimpot for the blend of dry/oscillator volume as well.