At Winter NAMM 2016, Strymon, the top-tier guitar effects pedal manufacturer, unveiled a prototype delay unit, the Generalissimo, that would have marked its entrance into the Eurorack synthesizer world.
Two years of development later—and a recognition that the term "Generalissimo" carries unwanted baggage from a certain Spanish fascist—Strymon has released the the Magneto, a four-head digital tape echo and looper unit designed specifically for Eurorack synth setups.
In a video to mark its release, Strymon DSP and sound designer Pete Celi explained part of the motivation behind the new effects module.
"We’re seeing some using the Strymon pedals in their Eurorack setups, and El Cap [El Capistan tape delay] seemed to be a popular choice, where people would place it at the end of their signal chain and sweeten up their signal with some nice tape delay sounds," Celi says. "So it seemed like a good place to start. And we knew that by introducing something in the Eurorack format, that it would give us the ability to really expand on the capabilities and feature set."
The Magneto has three operational modes—echo, sound on sound looper, and phrase sampler. It features Strymon’s dTape delay algorithm to emulate vintage tape machine timbres, an independent spring reverb, a phase-aligned clock multiplier, a chaotic osciallator, and zero latency sub-oscillator, along with CV inputs/outputs.
Despite the breadth of features and extreme versatility of Magneto, Celi stresses the importance of making the effects module musical and fun to play.
"It was an important part of it to make it feel natural and hopefully respond in ways that you would expect, in ways that don’t take you out of the musical moment," Celi says. "But at the same time allowing enough possibilities that you happily get into areas that you might not have known about, but do so in a way that ultimately is part of the musical process."
Be sure to check back for more updates about the Magneto, including when it becomes available to order.