The massive punch we’ve come to expect from EHX, in a much smaller footprint.
We’re suckers for a tiny pedal, the idea of carrying only 1 bag to a gig with both a guitar and a pedalboard stacked with mini pedals is very enticing. And with lots of guitarists building fly rigs for touring I’m sure we’re not alone in our desire for versatility and compatibility.
Electro Harmonix’s Pico POG and Pico Platform set the stage for a new range of mini pedals, based on their larger counterparts and it’s looking like they will make a very worthy contribution to my pedaltrain nano rig stacked with all the sounds I could possibly need on the road.
The amount of magical music making business EHX has managed to cram into these little frames is pretty extraordinary.
The Pico POG is the littlest of the three siblings of the original Polyphonic Octave Generator (“POG” – get it) pedal that EHX introduced in 2005, and this new iteration is one to get excited about.
The unit features a sub octave pot, an octave up pot, a dry pot (which blends in your dry signal) and a tone pot which now features three different filter modes which can be toggled through by pressing the filter button; an ordinary tilt EQ, a high pass filter and a low pass filter.
There’s countless cool and unique sounds you can coax out of this versatile little pedal; Turn up the sub-octave and mix it in 100% wet and your bass player might start to sweat; Blend in the octave up with your dry signal to emulate the sound of a 12 string and – My personal favourite – roll off some top end using the low pass filter and blending in both the octave up and down with no dry to make your guitar sound like an organ (it’s a bit uncanny).
It’s easy to see why EHX is onto the third generation (4th if you include the POG 2) of the POG and it almost seems like a zany little game that EHX is playing making it smaller and smaller. But it sure is a fun game to be a part of.
At just a fraction of the size of the Pog 2 you can finally lay down all the nasty Royal Blood tones that you drool over.
You can get the Pico Pog to stress out a little bit when you push its tracking capacity, particularly whilst playing quickly arpeggiated chords. Your audience is never gonna notice, but while playing you can feel a tiny bit of latency on occasion.
I also do kind of wish they’d managed to sneak on the detune feature from the POG 2 but I honestly have no idea how they would have managed it.
The Pico Platform is EHX’s newest addition to the Pico line and I’m happy to say this one pleasantly surprised us.
Sometimes I have a hard time with compressor pedals because they feel a little uninspiring. Sure it’s nice to have my playing evened out but that hardly excites me.
The platform does though and it’s mostly thanks to the sustain control. With this cranked all the way up you can hold a note forever. Putting this in front of a Big Muff (thanks again EHX) lets you live your wildest David Gilmour dreams.
Switch this thing into limiter mode and you can get away with pretty much anything with your right hand, the platform has got you covered, Super handy if you’re playing a really intricate and delicate part that you still need to soar over the rest of the band.
If you do just want to keep your tone in check and keep the compression subtle the Pico Platform has plenty of versatility in its settings to do that also. Slowing down the attack and switching the knee to soft knee can give you some more transparent compression.
If you’re looking to add a few pedals to your board, why not add these (and then buy even more, they’ll still fit) which you can pick up from your favourite music stores. The Pico Pog will run you back 550 AUD and the Pico Platform will cost around 350 AUD.
Find out more at: https://www.ehx.com/category/pedals/featured/?_featured=new-releases
