Announced at this year’s Musikmesse, the DigiTech Dirty Robot is coming to add some crazy to your rig. This compact synth emulation pedal gives you tons of options for even more sonic applications for your guitar or bass.
With seven controls and two voicing modes, you can wrangle an unbelievable number of sounds out of the Dirty Robot. The first voice gives you the warm analog synth sounds of the ‘70s and ‘80s, but the second voice gets a little weird: it provides a vocal formant synthesis effect, like that of vocoders and talk boxes.
Each control contains both an inner and outer knob for maximum tweakability. On the MIX/MOD control, the outer MOD knob throws a chorus on top of your sound to thicken it up while the MIX knob controls wet to dry mix. The SENS/TIME control allows you to set the trigger sensitivity for the synth sweep using the inner SENS knob, but the outer TIME knob depends on the START and STOP controls. It sets the time between the frequency-based sweep points indicated by the START and STOP knobs.
The unique DRIFT control is continuously variable and rotates a full 360 degrees, giving you the power to mix your synth sound in with sub, octave and square waves. The Dirty Robot even has a vibrato mode, which turns on when the footswitch is pressed and held. Lift up your foot and the vibrato stops — easy as pie!
To finish off this feature-heavy pedal, the Dirty Robot has stereo ins and outs and DigiTech’s fantastic StompLock technology, which keeps your settings where you want them, not leaving them prone to accidental last-minute adjustments.
Watch the video above to hear some wild synth sounds courtesy of the DigiTech Dirty Robot, and then click the banner below to shop for new and used Dirty Robot synth emulators for yourself.