A groovebox in your guitar pedal

EDIT

One page, four groups: oscillator, filter, envelope and play. Every group has a graph you drag with a finger and sliders under it. The keyboard below lets you hear each change while you make it, and LOOP repeats a note so both hands stay on the sound.

• Wave saw · square
• Tune ±12 st
• Cutoff 30 Hz–12 kHz
• Reso to self-oscillation
• Env mod 0–6 oct
• Decay 30 ms–2.5 s
• Accent
• Glide 5–500 ms
• Level

Factory patches to start from: Rooftop Acid, Rubber Bass, Squelch, Dub Sub, Saw Lead. Step through them with the footswitches.

ARP

The arpeggiator runs on the sequencer's clock, so it is always in time with the drums. With LATCH, tap keys one by one to build a chord, then take your hands off and play the guitar over it. The latched chord is saved with the project.

• Mode up · down · up/down · random · as played
• Rate 1/8 · 1/16 · 1/32
• Octaves 1–4
• Gate 10–100 %
• Latch
• Up to 16 notes

PADS

Twelve voices modelled on the 808 and the 727: bass drum, snare, closed and open hat, clap, cowbell, low and high tom, rimshot, cymbal, conga and maracas. Every voice is made from oscillators, noise and filters, the way the original circuits make them. Pads play with several fingers, and the closed hat chokes the open one.

GRID

Drum lanes and a synth lane on one grid. Tap a step to set it. Hold a step to open its p-lock panel and turn any knob: that value plays on that step only. The sequencer runs inside the audio engine, so every step lands on the exact sample.

• 12 drum lanes in two banks
• 1–64 steps
• Pages 1 · 17 · 33 · 49
• LEN per pattern
• Parameter locks
• Accent and slide on the synth lane
• Swing to 60 %
• Live record from pads and keys

CLIPS

With nothing playing, the first loop you record is free: when you close it, the pedal works out its tempo, and the drums and the synth follow it. While the transport runs, a take arms, starts on the next bar and closes on the bar, so loops are always whole bars and stay in phase for as long as they play.

• 4 clips
• REC · DUB · PLAY · STOP
• Undo / redo
• Level · Pan · Feedback
• Speed ½ · 1 · 2
• Reverse
• Clean seam crossfade
• About 2½ minutes of audio

CHAIN

The guitar or line input runs through five blocks: drive, compressor, EQ, chorus and tremolo. Tap a block to switch it on or off, hold it to edit. After the chain the guitar is a track like the others: its own fader, sends into the delay and the reverb, and it can feed the looper. Any of its knobs can follow an LFO.

• Drive drive · tone · level
• Comp threshold · ratio · attack · release · makeup
• EQ bass · mid · treble ±12 dB
• Chorus rate · depth · mix
• Tremolo rate · depth · sine / square

The Ampero's amps, cabs and stock effects are not part of 2.0 Groovebox; they come later with 2.0 Guitar.

MOD

Four LFOs shared by the whole pedal. Hold any knob, on any page, and pick an LFO: the knob gets a badge, and you see it move. A Step shape turns an LFO into a 16-step modulation sequence you draw with your finger.

• Shape sine · tri · saw · square · S&H · step
• Rate 0.05–20 Hz
• Sync 1/32 – 4 bars
• Depth · Phase · Offset
• Retrig off · note
• Fade in
• 16 routes

Footswitches

Each footswitch has a tap and a hold. In PAGE mode the tap does what the current screen needs (play, next pattern, octave, loop record, next clip) and the holds are yours. In CUSTOM mode all four are yours. Press both footswitches together to switch modes. The strip above the section bar always shows what each footswitch will do.

• Play / stop
• Rec
• Next / previous pattern
• Tap tempo
• Shift
• Save
• Mute EXT / SYNTH / DRUMS
• Arp · Latch · Octave
• Next LFO
• Loop rec · Next clip · Loop undo · Loop stop