Hear Mattoverse’s fruit and veg-powered pedal, the FloraVolt, in action

Mattoverse has announced that its fruit and vegetable-powered overdrive pedal, the FloraVolt, is now available to purchase.

We first reported on the FloraVolt back in December, when Mattoverse posted images of an earlier build on Instagram. As a refresher: the FloraVolt is best described as an overdrive/distortion that uses fruit and vegetables as organic batteries.

It’s a similar principle to the classroom-classic potato clock experiment. However, different produce yields different tonal results. Mattoverse says that the pedal is capable of “everything from starved distorted tones to mild overdrive and low gain crunch”, but most fruit and vegetables will leave it operating slightly above unity gain.

To equip your selected foodstuff, you simply squish it onto the two prongs mounted on the top of the pedal. A drip plate is installed below the prongs to minimize the risk of fruit juice finding its way through to the pedal’s innards.

It should work with most produce, but in particular, Mattoverse recommends apples, bananas, potatoes and citrus fruits like oranges, lemons and limes as good options. 

That said, the builder does point out that it can’t guarantee results with every variety, meaning a bit of trial and error is to be expected. Though, frankly, we’d hope buyers of a fruit-powered pedal will be open to experimentation.

Nonetheless, the demo video above showcases some nice results from synth and guitar applications involving an array of produce – we particularly like those bluesy banana tones.

The unit also features a side-mounted gain knob, a bass roll-off toggle-switch and true bypass switching – because you wouldn’t want any tonal impurities spoiling your guitar’s new juice diet.

The FloraVolt is available now for $149. For more information and purchase links, head to Mattoverse Electronics.