If you want a modulation pedal with a difference, this will reward you with sounds you won’t find elsewhere. You’ll have to dig deep – both with the controls and within your wallet – to find them, though…
Pros
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Solid build.
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Presets.
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Stereo operation.
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Huge variety of sounds.
Cons
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There’s a lot to get your head around.
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It ain’t exactly cheap.
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Beetronics has invented a new sub-genre in effects pedals by describing its new Seabee pedal as a ‘Harmochorus’. At its heart, this is an analogue bucket-brigade chorus pedal that has been complemented with digital control of the chorus delay time to make the chorus wave bounce up and down in precise pitches.
This creates a pitch-shifting modulation that the company says has never been found in any other pedal. The knobs, toggle switches and footswitches, plus alternative functions, offer loads to get to grips with as there’s so much that can be dialled in, but, fortunately, the pedal has onboard presets, so any sound that you conjure up can be stored.
The basic starting point is the Effect toggle switch, which lets you select Chorus or Harmochorus, and each of these effects has three modes. Now, while there’s a jack to take an expression pedal and more, much of what the pedal does is based on performance features direct from the pedal itself: a footswitchable Ramp effect where you can trigger movement.
You can adjust the ramp speed and have a choice of three different ramp shapes and the ability to invert their direction. The actual ramping is assigned to a specific parameter depending on the selected mode.
(Image credit: Future / Phil Barker)
The Chorus section has Roto, Depth and Sting modes. The first, Roto, is similar to a rotary speaker whereby you can ramp the rate control of the chorus giving you two different speeds. Dual mode lets you ramp the modulation depth, while Sting mode ramps the chorus delay time.
Meanwhile, Harmochorus has a Dual mode with two speeds/two pitches, so you can ramp between two modulating harmonies. The Arp mode features arpeggio-like modulation movements with selectable pattern and chord stack, and, finally, Mad mode is more of the same but with random pitch patterns. Phew!
At its most basic, this pedal can produce some of the lushest static conventional chorus and vibrato sounds around, but it’s an extremely creative tool and goes way beyond that to create a quite extraordinary array of alternative modulation sounds and textures with loads of movement that can be fully exploited in real-time with some judicious footswitching.
Trevor Curwen has played guitar for several decades – he's also mimed it on the UK's Top of the Pops. Much of his working life, though, has been spent behind the mixing desk, during which time he has built up a solid collection of the guitars, amps and pedals needed to cover just about any studio session. He writes pedal reviews for Guitarist and has contributed to Total Guitar, MusicRadar and Future Music among others.
