Benjamin “Aen” Hinz has built a career out of making people say “Whoa, that’s nuts.” Since he started twisting circuits to his own design in 2007 and founded experimental heavyweight Dwarfcraft Devices, he has become pretty good at making people say that pretty often. Renowned in the pedal community for crafting all the fuzzy, glitchy, synthy goodness guitarists dream of but couldn’t bring to life, Aen’s pedals are coveted by the likes of Justin Vernon, Juan Alderete, and Omar Rodriguez.
We had Aen in the office recently to show off his latest offering, the Wizard of Pitch. Originally conceived as a streamlined rendition of the Pitchgrinder, the Wizard took on new life as another beast entirely the more Aen worked on the design. More instrument of creative chaos than traditional pitch shifter (though it can shift pitch in spades), the Wizard of Pitch starts with a souped-up 32-bit resolution and familiar pitch, mix, and boost knobs. The fun comes into play when the Speed knob and Step/Bender switches are brought in the ring: Speed controlling the rate of wet/dry crossfade, Bender producing a drop in pitch as the signal decays, and Step creating an entropic crack of pitches/making the Speed knob control rate of pitch.
In his Pedal Tricks session, Aen pairs the Wizard with Red Panda’s Bitmap bitcrusher and Context reverb to illustrate his pedal’s capabilities as a tone-sculpting tool. In addition to explaining the Wizard’s layout and providing examples of sweet spots for its settings, Aen also demonstrates the intriguingly experimental results of adjusting settings while playing for completely new textures and effects.
Check out the video above and look on down below to pick up a Dwarfcraft Device of your very own.