Eventide PitchFactor Harmonizer Pedal Review – Part 2
As promised in my past post about the Eventide PitchFactor, I said that I would be back in a couple weeks to give you the low down on the Eventide PitchFactor stompbox. I’ve got to say that I’ve had a ton of fun giving it a good going over. Just using it over the past couple weeks has broadened my playing horizons and has given me lots of new musicial ideas to play with. If I could sum it all up in two words it would be “features” and “inspiration”.
Features
For a small box, it sure packs in a lot of features! My only complaint with that was that I found myself, at least at first, playing with the knobs more than actually playing my guitar! I guess I should say that it is a good thing though because of all the different tones you can achieve.
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Instead of telling you all about the different effects that this thing can produce, I would rather get into other aspects for this review. There are already tons of youtube videos and other write ups that do a fantastic job of showing every sound that this can do. Like this one for example:
This video shows a couple of the tones that I really enjoyed playing around with – the arpeggio effect called the Harpeggiator and also the Micropitch preset.
When I first plugged into the pedal, I spent a good week just playing around on all the different presets. I have to say that I really didn’t feel the need to stray too far from the presets – but then again, it’s much more fun to get tweaking things yourself so after I got the presets warmed up, I got my hands dirty and played around with my own settings. Dialing in different tones might look daunting at first when you look at all the controls available but it is really easy when you get the hang of it. The coolest thing is the display screen gives you an excellent idea on what you are doing in real time as you turn knobs – it actually changes as you make changes by the turning of knobs.
When putting together my own tones, I was really impressed with the amount of flexibility I had for each effect. Changing pitches, depths and other settings made for a lot of experimentation. This is where most of the fun came for me.
I always like to look at gear from a practical standpoint as well and one thing that I really like about the design of this is the nice big display on the front that tells you which patch you are set on (and more when you start turning the knobs!). Things like this really come in handy on a dark stage. The toggle switches aren’t too crowded either – nothing worse than crowded toggles on a pedal!
The only thing that I didn’t care for on the pedal where the swtiches themselves. They are the type that you stomp on but don’t actually feel a “click”. I like a big ol’ “click” — the old school in me I guess. This is a minor thing though and it’s just me being picky really. The toggles still work flawlessly.
Inspiration
Once thing about a piece of gear like this one is that the different effects and tones that you can play with give you even more musicial ideas to pull out of your brain. I found that once I got used to the different settings, I was really starting to adapt to some of the effects well and played things that I would not normally play. I like gear that helps inspire my playing and give me more avenues to expore the music I make with my guitar. Sure, there are some effects that I will probably never play with again but there are a lot that gave me some new ways to approach my playing.
I think that this is a great piece of gear for a guitarist that is looking to expand their playing a bit more and get mroe ideas flowing. Being able to sit down and compose entire pieces around some of the effects available on this pedal is something that I defintitely want to get around to donig someday soon.
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