MT
Bass player review
I tested the Pitch Fork with a Music Man Stingray Classic (standard tuning).
The Pitch Fork is built using the standard Electro Harmonix die-cast aluminium enclosures we all know. It is reasonably solid and I can't see any problem regarding its solidity for studio or live usage.
The controls are intuitive and well organised. The Blend knob sets the balance dry/wet allowing a good level of flexibility. The Shift knob sets the pitch shift interval. The manual, also available from the EHX web site explains in detail the wide amount of possible settings. The only things I would have liked to see is the presence of two separate knobs for dry and wet but it not a major point. I'm sure other users prefer a blend knob.
The tracking is perfect: it tracks without a glitch in total polyphony. On some settings, I noticed a little bit of latency but nothing terrible.
The range of available pitch shifts is huge. The Pitch Fork can go up (or down) 3 octaves. With guitar is a setting probably useful for communicating with dolphins but nevertheless it shows how flexible the Pitch Fork can be.
Although the pedal itself is a monster of flexibility, in my personal opinion, the tone itself is depressingly bad - at least with bass guitar.
The sonic artifacts are very noticeable. It is like there were a second note playing alongside the major one. A sort of small delay not too dissimilar from a reverb effect set to "room" and with an almost zero decay.
I didn't test the Pitch Fork with electric guitar. I hope that at higher frequencies, the sonic artifact disappears and the Pitch Fork performs better.
If you are a bass player that wants to experiment with pitch shift effects in the bedroom it is a great pedal. It has a lot of settings and it tracks great. However, if you plan to use it live or in a recording environment, I would be very surprised if it covered your needs with professional results.
The Pitch Fork is built using the standard Electro Harmonix die-cast aluminium enclosures we all know. It is reasonably solid and I can't see any problem regarding its solidity for studio or live usage.
The controls are intuitive and well organised. The Blend knob sets the balance dry/wet allowing a good level of flexibility. The Shift knob sets the pitch shift interval. The manual, also available from the EHX web site explains in detail the wide amount of possible settings. The only things I would have liked to see is the presence of two separate knobs for dry and wet but it not a major point. I'm sure other users prefer a blend knob.
The tracking is perfect: it tracks without a glitch in total polyphony. On some settings, I noticed a little bit of latency but nothing terrible.
The range of available pitch shifts is huge. The Pitch Fork can go up (or down) 3 octaves. With guitar is a setting probably useful for communicating with dolphins but nevertheless it shows how flexible the Pitch Fork can be.
Although the pedal itself is a monster of flexibility, in my personal opinion, the tone itself is depressingly bad - at least with bass guitar.
The sonic artifacts are very noticeable. It is like there were a second note playing alongside the major one. A sort of small delay not too dissimilar from a reverb effect set to "room" and with an almost zero decay.
I didn't test the Pitch Fork with electric guitar. I hope that at higher frequencies, the sonic artifact disappears and the Pitch Fork performs better.
If you are a bass player that wants to experiment with pitch shift effects in the bedroom it is a great pedal. It has a lot of settings and it tracks great. However, if you plan to use it live or in a recording environment, I would be very surprised if it covered your needs with professional results.
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