Electro-Harmonix Micro Synthesizer (Original)

Electro-Harmonix has been making crazy guitars pedals since the 70s with a lot of their designs emulating iconic sounds from the 60s. Located in New York Electro-Harmonix has made some of the most iconic and unusual guitar accessories of the last 50 years. They are most famous for their American version of the Big Muff pedal. The Micro Synth is one of their most unusual pedals. It is able to emulate all sorts of strange sounds from the 60s. It can make your guitar sound like a Fender Rhodes or a Moog Synth. You can sound like you have an octavia on or sound like you are playing backwards. You will think you are at a Pink Floyd recording session when you switch it on. New progressive bands like Smashing Pumpkins have used these kinds of pedals to great results.

UTILIZATION

The face of the box has ten slider controls featuring four independent voices, one input and one output jack, effect on/off footswitch and power on/off switch. Not going crazy with the sliders is the key to getting a good usable tone. The trigger slider controls how hard you have to hit the signal for the effect to kick in. The sub-octave slider isolates and controls the bass harmonic of the guitar sound. The guitar slider controls just that. It controls how much of the guitars original sound make it through the sound of the effects. The octave slider is another octave parallel to the bass octave. Square wave controls the saturation of the actual synth sound effect. Anyone who has played a keyboard synth will recognize the square wave tone. Attack delay does what it says, it delays the attack. With a delayed attack you can get the weird backwards guitar sound. The resonance control should just be re-labeled presence. The start and stop frequency knobs control when and synth tone comes in and when it stops respectively. If you want the synth sound to last longer with every note you would turn down the stop slider. These two sliders also control the pitch of the synth sound. With a high start frequency and low stop frequency the synth sound will start with a high pitch then go to a low one as the note sustains. The last slider just controls the rate of the effect.

SOUND QUALITY

You can get all the classic synth tones with this pedal. It feels like you are not playing guitar anymore. It does not do modern key synth tones it only does the classic ones. You can get all the weird sounds used by Pink Floyd and Hawkwind. You will find yourself playing with the settings on the pedal more than playing the guitar. This is not a set it and forget it pedal. It has too many sounds on tap to just use one.

OVERALL OPINION

This is one of Electro-Harmonix's coolest devices. There is not anything else like this on the market. With the solid construction and being built in America it is well worth its price. I would not want to rely on something this complex built in a factory who knows where. Electro-Harmonix knows what they are doing when they make a pedal like this and this is the best of the best.

The Electro-Harmonix Micro Synthesizer is actually a guitar pedal, NOT a synthesizer. It functions like a guitar synthesizer, except with one crucial difference; it doesn't need a special synthesizer pickup! No, this pedal simply uses the pickups on your guitar instead. This pedal is not capable of being edited with a computer, and is not MIDI-capable. I'm not sure whether or not it is an analog pedal, but I believe it is, since it sounds a lot like an old-school analog synth. This pedal is not rackable.

UTILIZATION

The editing of effects on this pedal isn't too difficult. It's got a few more features than most pedals, but that's because it has a pretty broad range of possible sounds. It is controlled mostly by faders. The first fader is a master volume. The next four faders control the mix of octave effects on the signal. There is a fader for sub-octave (or an octave below the signal), a fader for the original dry signal, a higher octave fader, and a fader for the "square-wave" signal. The square wave signal is what makes the signal come off as very "synth-y". There is a fader for attack delay, which basically allows you to fade in with every note played (this creates awesome synth effects). The remaining four faders control the envelope, and the rates at which it is filtered.

SOUND QUALITY

The sounds that come out of this are pretty cool for the most part. It actually has a few that really do sound like an analog synth from the late 70s/early 80s. There are some other tones on it that really also give you a great sound. Between the octave effects and the envelope filtering, this thing gets some pretty cool sounds. The fact of the matter, however, is that there are a lot of people who wish to emulate the sounds of other instruments on the guitar. Unfortunately for them, this pedal has no way of doing that. It simply emulates the Moogs and other synths from the days of old. This pedal really colors the sound drastically, which is sort of the point. If that's a problem for you, avoid this pedal. It's also not true bypass, which means it slightly colors the signal even when switched off.

OVERALL OPINION

I think that this is a pretty cool box for guitarists. My main beef with it is that chords, with the exception of power chords, almost always come out sounding kind of crappy. It's mainly a single note, power chords type of box. Also, the price almost makes this not worth it for me, and I'd almost rather buy another synth than buy this. Regardless, this is still a great pedal, and one that certainly can be very useful if you know how to use it.

The Electro Harmonix Micro Synthesizer is a guitar stomp box designed to make your guitar sound like a synthesizer. It is an analog pedal and 1/4 jacks for input and output. It is not rackable as it is a guitar foot pedal.

UTILIZATION

The use of the pedal is pretty easy to follow. The general configuration is straight forward - there are two sections, one for voice mix and one for filter sweep and there are ten sliders total. While it is easy to get some cool sounding effects with this pedal, I sometimes have some trouble with getting consistent tracking on it when playing. This is the really the only downfall of the pedal. I don't have a manual, but it would probably come in handy as there are a lot of ins and outs of this pedal.

SOUND QUALITY

The sound quality and effects on this pedal are generally pretty good sounding and realistic. In terms of whether or not you can really turn your guitar into a synth, I would say not. That being you said, you can get some really cool and interesting synth like tones from this and it is an interesting tool to say the least. I have only used this with guitar, as it is really made for guitar, and they make a separate version of this for bass guitar.

OVERALL OPINION

I first used the Electro Harmonix Micro Synth about four years ago. I was really curious in exploring synth like sounds that could be made with my guitar. While I'm not completely satisfied with this pedal in terms of that, it can do some pretty cool things and I have found it a useful tool when trying to explore new sounds with a guitar. I like this better than the Line 6 FM4 which also has some synth like sounds. While the tracking isn't great on this pedal, it is better than the FM4 and to me the overall tone is more authentic sounding. The price isn't all the cheap, but I would encourage those interested in this pedal to go down to the local store and see if it is for them before buying!

Analog, with full settings ...
on one side the signal change: the sub octave, guitar, octave and fuzz
the other modulation (filter what) resonance, the beginning and end of the sequence, and the spleen. In addition: the trig (time or effect snaps wholesale) and attack (for violins effects for example).

UTILIZATION

It's pretty simple and visual end, after touching a bit of everything we understand how it works fairly easily (I think).
No presets or noon, it's mono!

SOUND QUALITY

I love the sound! It's hot, a little dirty, not for rhythmic chordal
but for very groovy riffs, although the fact that FAT!
With a little experience it also acts octavia and fuzz.

OVERALL OPINION

I have the old version, I put it in the loop of the amp,
or I isolates with non-true bypass pedals.
This is the sound of keyboards before digital, but the guitar.
With a phaser behind a little delay is what to do ...
This is a bit of a tool in itself.