Handmade and hand finished just around the corner
We had a look at some fresh new pedals from Colortone. These are handmade and hand finished just around the corner from our offices in Sydney so they’re about as boutique as they come.
Colortone’s new range presents three offerings; the Roundhouse, the Lo-Fi Delay and the Spring Reverb II. Let’s attack these in order of where we’d put them in our pedal chain.
The Roundhouse is A multimode tremolo pedal with three switchable types of modulation. An optical tremolo, a harmonic tremolo and a vibrato.
All three of these can be further controlled with a wave shape switch with three options: triangle, sine and square, which offers everything from a classic more subtle tremolo effect all the way to a chopping, on/off kind of trem.
I personally really loved the harmonic tremolo setting which introduces harmonic modulation through phase shifting. The addition of a reverb and a grain knob also adds some extra utility to the pedal. Cranking up the grain can give some really nice Lo Fi distortion to your signal.
Holding down the Tap footswitch ramps the tremolo to a multiple of the current setting over about a second or two. This emulates the time it would take for a rotary speaker to speed up. The longer the current waveform cycle, the more of a speed increase you will notice.
This was more intuitive than I was expecting and can be used to create some great swirling builds and transitions. I do kinda wish that the tap tempo would set after only two taps because 4 taps is a little too much dancing on the pedal board.
The Lo-Fi delay is a grainy, tape style delay that works pretty much as you’d expect. Three different algorithms give you either hi fidelity repeats, dark low passed repeats or tape style repeats with a high cut. This last setting is probably where you’ll be spending the most time with the pedal, it’s full of character.
Similar to the Roundhouse, a second layer can be activated by holding the splash footswitch to create a huge swirling feedback delay, which is a really cool way to create an organic feedback transition between sections at a live show. It can also be used to momentarily change the tempo of the current delay speed to either ½ the speed , ⅓ of the speed or double or triple the speed.
Alternatively the Lo-Fi delay can be used as a spot effect by switching it over into ‘dry’ mode, where the delay only kicks in when holding the splash button.
The Spring Reverb II will probably sit on the end of your pedal chain and features three really nice reverb algorithms; Echoverb (based on the 90s Princeton PT2399 Echo), Studio – a classic clean studio reverb, and Tank – a 70s electromechanical reverb.
It also includes a mod function which introduces a subtle vibrato and rototrem modulation.
A second layer of controls allows you to fine tune your reverb, modulation and boost settings. These controls involve a little bit of menu diving but don’t panic, you’re not going to be adjusting these on the fly, you’ll most likely be finding your favourite sound and setting and forgetting. And let’s be real, who doesn’t love a bit of a menu dive to find some cool sounds.
You’ll also find a sneaky usb port on the side, so I think we’ll be seeing some additional algorithms to come, and a little birdy told us that you’ll even be able to make custom algorithm requests.
Don’t be scared off by the depth of these pedals, they all come with a really nicely designed and intuitive user guide, and trust me, you’ll be grateful you took the time to read it. There’s a whole heap of interesting sounds to discover.
If you’re a guitarist who’s interested in adding some unique, niche and eye-catching pedals to your rig, I reckon you should consider adding Colourtone to your list.
They’ll be a worthy addition whether you’re looking for some new additions to your live rig, or some fun new toys for the studio.
They come in at 469 AUD each for the Roundhouse and the Lo-Fi Delay and 312 AUD for the Spring Reverb II.
Check out the Colortone website for more info: https://www.colortonepedals.com
