Bonkers
Bonkers is the result of a very strange idea I had one day while developing Patterns. Since I was already working with the Bubbles sequencer I wanted to see what happened if I took the pulses that gets created in Patterns and just run them straight into the PT2399 inside of Bubbles (full circle and all that).
It turns out it does something very bonkers! It makes the delay time go back and fourth between max and min and depending on the speed of the pulses you can get some really bizarre ring mod pitch shifty sounds. Very avant garde.
Bonkers User Guide
The pedal uses 9VDC power (2.1mm jack: center-negative).
Soft Bypass (Right Footswitch):
This pedal uses a soft bypass switching system with two modes of operation.
- Short Press: Works like any regular pedal. Press to turn it on and then press to turn it off.
- Momentary/Hold: If you press and hold for about 1-2 seconds the pedal will enter a hold mode. Here it will simply stay in the state it entered when pressing down the button, for however long you decide to hold down the button, and then return when you release the button. So if you press down when the pedal is turned OFF it will stay ON for as long as you hold the button pressed down, and vice versa.
Info:
Bonkers is a based on a PT2399 delay. But instead of having just a classic time knob we are instead working with pulses.
Bonkers uses a five-step sequencer, where each step sets the speed at which the pulses are pulsating. These pulses then make the delay-time jump between short and long values. This means it can be used as kind of a polyrhythmic vibrato, bizarro reverb octave ringmod delay trails, or as an under water robot sounds. Go super bananas with it and have a good time machine! It’s totally bonkers!
You can also sync Bonkers with a 5V gate clock to whatever you play into it and all of a sudden you have a polyrythmic vibrato, kinda! Idk, I just know that I have had so much fun with it since I came up with this idea!
Controls:
The sequencer has two modes of operation:
- Tap Tempo Mode, where you set the sequencer tempo by either tapping on the left footswitch or adjusting the speed knob (). It will automatically switch over to whatever you change last.
- Manual Mode*, where the sequencer is frozen and you move by either pressing the left footswitch or connecting a 5V CV-Clock to the 3.5mm jack on the back. Additionally the Tap Tempo Mode will sync to the sequencer in manual mode so that every time the pedal turns back on, it has moved a step in the sequencer. To change between modes simply press and hold the left footswitch for about 2 seconds.
The top-left “X” knob is your mix control - from 100% dry, to introducing “delay”, to slight overdriving of the “delay” lines.
The center-top “Coffee” knob controls Repeats/Feedback. Fully clockwise for self-oscillation possibilities.
The top-right “Heart” knob is your Primary Time control. It decides the range of the delay jumpy-shiftings. Fully clockwise for max range.
The bottom-left “Snail|Rabbit” knob sets your sequencer speed - from slow as a snail to fast as a rabbit!
The bottom-right “Boot” knob is where you set how many Steps the sequencer will utilize: from 1-5.
BTW: Did I tell you that this pedal is Bonkers?!