Gear Hunter

EarthQuaker Devices - EQDRMV2

Description

Rainbow Machine V2

The Rainbow Machine is for experimenters, adventurists, and noisemakers. Totally not for purists and/or tone hounds. There are no natural sounds that come from this box. It takes modern DSP and uses it as a tool of future past to create real-time pitch shifting using digital oscillators.

Rainbow Machine V2 has been re-imagined to be more versatile, twice as loud as the original, with an extended delay time, deeper chorus tones, silent flexiswitch footswitches on both the Activate and Magic functions, and most of all, has more Magic?

The Pitch control adjusts the frequency of the polyphonic pitch-warped harmony from a fourth below your input, to a third above, and every atonal pitch in-between. Noon is the unison position. Use the Primary function control to adjust the volume of the polyphonic harmony.

You may add in an accompanying octave or thicken the modulation by bringing up the Secondary function control. The Tracking control adjusts the lag time between the wet and dry signals, and the Tone control rolls off some treble for a darker, vintage sound. Clockwise is bright, counterclockwise is dark.

(Pro Tip: The Rainbow Machine's pitch warping behavior is entirely dependent upon the Pitch knob's position relative to noon. Set above noon, echoes, pixie trails, and other effects will ascend in pitch as they sustain. With the Pitch control below noon, any lingering effects will descend in pitch. This becomes extremely important when using the Magic function.)

The Secondary control adds an octave of the Primary harmony. When the Pitch control is above noon, Secondary adds an octave above the harmony. When the Pitch control is below noon, the Secondary control will add one octave below the harmony. With the Pitch set to noon, the Secondary control adds an additional chorus voice for modulated, triple-tracked tones. Use this control to blend in faux-shimmer sounds or a low-frequency rumble. It's up to you. From there, it's only a matter of how weird you wanna get.

And you can choose how weird you wanna get with the Magic control. This is a regeneration control that creates aliasing (among other things) by feeding the Primary and Secondary signals back on themselves and each other, and a bunch of other stuff no one understands.

With the Magic engaged and the control set low, you can squeeze a few extra repeats out of whatever setting you happen to be using. As you increase the Magic control, you'll start noticing increased ambience, resonant, edge-of-oscillation pitch-shifting delays, chorus, metallic digi-flanging, ascending (or descending) pixie trails, controllable self-oscillation, squalls of synthetic noise, whale song, and finally, distortion. It'll take you way beyond and open up your third eye, trust us. In conjunction with the Tracking control, the Magic creates wild pitch take offs and descends, chaos chorusing, shrieks, groans, gurgles, briggles, bruggles, bridals, wizard-blessed wizardry, signal transformation, imminent destruction, and other general mayhem.

Maybe you only wanna get weird for a second? Okay, with the Rainbow Machine engaged, hold down the Magic footswitch, get weird, and then let go to return to your boring old Magic-less guitar tone. Or, press the switch like normal, and the Magic remains engaged until you press the switch again. Ditto for the Activate switch. Press and hold to use the Rainbow Machine as a momentary effect, then let go to bypass; or feel free to press the switch like normal and use the Rainbow Machine like you would any other effects pedal.

Each and every Rainbow Machine is harvested by hand in the (pixie) dusty Rainbonium mines of sunshiny Akron, Ohio, USA.

Hear the Rainbow Machine on Soundcloud.

Power

The Rainbow Machine should be powered by a standard 9-volt DC power supply with a 2.1mm negative center barrel. We always recommend pedal-specific, transformer-isolated wall-wart power supplies or multiple isolated-output supplies. Pedals will make extra noise if there is ripple or unclean power. Switching-type power supplies, daisy chains and non-pedal specific power supplies do not filter dirty power as well and let through unwanted noise. Do not run at higher voltages!

Current draw: 60 mA
Input Impedance: 1M
Output Impedance: < 1K

Switching

This device is true bypass and uses electronic relay based switching. Audio will not pass without power.

For standard latching operation of the Activate and Magic functions, tap the footswitch once to activate the effect and then tap again to bypass. For momentary operation, hold the footswitch down for as long as you'd like to use the effect. Once you release the switch the effect will be bypassed. Magic may only be used while the Activate LED is lit.