Jack White’s Third Man Hardware has teamed up with Eventide Audio for the Knife Edge, an octave fuzz pedal augmented with “earth-shaking analog synth tones” that ships with presets designed by the former White Stripes frontman.
Eventide Audio’s tone notes promise “bone-rattling distortion and generous heaps of sonic chaos” but you probably figured that out already – an octave fuzz plus analogue synth, this is not a subtle, always-on tone sweetener. This is your pedalboard’s nuclear option, and as Russell Wedelich, CTO, Eventide Audio, admits, this was a radical project that took the audio processing specialists out of their comfort zone.
“The Third Man crew have amazing product design instincts and we learned so much throughout our collaboration,” he said. “It didn’t feel like work, it felt like rock ’n’ roll.”
Eventide and Third Man’s timing couldn’t be better, because this even looks like a Halloween release, with the Knife Drop’s enclosure art looking like the poster to a giallo. All we need is a demo video in which a black-gloved hand turns the controls. Dry ice optional.
There are three dials lineup up across the top of the enclosure, with a push-button to activate a secondary mode. Synth controls the mix of the monophonic synth and your guitar's signal, and it doubles up as Attack, controlling the envelope attack time of the filter.
Drive controls the amount of gain in the circuit and doubles up as a Resonance control for setting the depth of the filter. Level and Cutoff share a control, too, with the latter for choosing where the sweep of the sweep filter begins, the former for output level.
There are two footswitches, one to engage the effect, the other to engage the octaves. Above each of the footswitches there is a button. When the button above the Active footswitch is green, the filter is placed before the distortion. If it’s red, the filter is post-distortion.
Similarly, if the button above the Octave footswitch is green, the octave-fuzz is in octave-up mode. If it is red, well, you’ve got an octave-up and a sub-octave in the signal, and doesn’t that sound like fun? (It sounds really nuts)
Those controls should be intuitive, which is a good thing; it’s not every day that you have an octave fuzz/analogue synth on the pedalboard. But sonically, it makes sense to put them together.
Judging by the demo videos, the tracking on the Knife Drop is superlative, allowing for those single-note runs to be articulate and yet still sounding like you’re causing all sorts of panic for your guitar amp’s speaker cone.
This being Third Man in league with Eventide Audio, there are options. The Knife Drop is MIDI-compatible. You can design your own presets. There is an input for an expression pedal, with an LED ladder display that illuminates to guide you on what’s going on. There is a switchable guitar/line level input.
The Knife Edge is the latest in a string of high-profile collaborations. Last month, it was with Fender, collection that included a custom tube amp and a pair of two signature guitars.
In August, Third Man and Anasounds partnered on the La Grotte, a reverb pedal with not one or two but three mechanical springs in its design – the ultimate drip drop? Possibly. La Grotte also features an onboard preamp inspired by the Tampco Tone Oven.
“Collaborating with Eventide on the Knife Drop has been an inspiring and exciting experience that expanded into some amazing sonic possibilities,” said Third Man Hardware’s Dan Mancini. “We’re so excited to get the Knife Drop into people’s hands, to make their own sounds and feel the same excitement we had.”
And you can get your hands on the Knife Drop now. It is priced $299 in standard black enclosure, and there is a limited edition yellow version available direct that is priced £/$399. See Third Man Hardware for more details.
