Noise Engineering has introduced Dystorpia, their first guitar effects pedal.

They say that, while Dystorpia was designed for guitars and other stringed instruments, it sounds great on synths, drum machines, basses, even theremin.

“From the start, we knew we wanted to make something designed with guitarists in mind,” explains  Noise Engineering co-owner Stephen McCaul. “Our testing initially focused entirely on how Dystorpia sounds with the more complex dynamics of guitars. Once we got there, we started trying it on other instruments and we were excited at how well we’d hit our mark; Dystorpia sounds great on guitars, but also basses, synths, drums, and more.”

Dystorpia features three different distortion parameters.

• Gain sets the input level going into the rest of the pedal, and can overdrive for classic driven timbres.
• As the Blend knob is turned up, it adds in a slight saturation for some gentle distortion on its own. This makes it easier to timbrally balance the unaffected dry sound with the heavily processed wet signal.
• Fold controls a wavefolding algorithm, a technique taken from the world of synthesizers that creates a unique flavor of harmonic distortion.
• Pura adds a full-wave rectifier to the mix, another unique distortion.
• Along with all of that distortion, Dystorpia features an expression-controllable Tone control with variable mid-band frequency, a switchable noise gate, and an optional suboctave generator.

Dystorpia also features two foot switches. On the right, a buffered bypass turns off and on the distortion processing. The left foot switch activates a latching or momentary freeze effect, infinitely sustaining a sound until it’s unfrozen again. While a sound is frozen, the pedal can still process new sounds at the input, allowing the performer to play over a frozen signal.

Dystorpia Manual Video:

Features:

• Three unique distortion effects
• Expression-controllable Tone parameter
• Optional noise gate to reduce hum and add dynamics
• Add in suboctaves with the DOOM switch
• Infinitely freeze a signal with the left footswitch
• Sounds great on guitar and synths

Pricing and Availability:

Dystorpia is available now, priced at MSRP US$399