Old Blood Noise Float Dual Moving Filter Pedal Overview
A Re-envisioning of the Filter Effect
Turning its predilection for parallel signals toward the world of filters and widening out to full stereo, Old Blood Noise Endeavors unveils its first digitally-controlled analogue pedal. Float boasts two independently controllable filters and copious capabilities for motion. Utilising the two filters in tandem can create stereo movement, linked reactive elements, and modulations that approach harmonic tremolo and phaser, as well as classic filter sounds.
Filters… could we improve upon a pedal genre we’d never participated in? Should we? Of course, we knew all about those sharp quacks and the smooth wows, plus the synth players among us knew the resonant sweeps. But, as our friends kept telling us, the slow dual motions, the controls that go a little more left than you expect, the parallel undulations and surely other corners were all left unexplored. So, turning our predilection for parallel signals toward the world of filters and widening out to full stereo, say hi to Float, our new Dual Moving Filter pedal.
As OBNE’s first digitally-controlled analog pedal, Float boasts two independently controllable filters and copious capabilities for motion. Utilising the two filters in tandem can create stereo movement, linked reactive elements and otherworldly psychedelic modulations. The two independent filters can be set to either low pass, band pass or high pass. The core of each filter is its Cutoff Frequency, which can stay still or move via either its 6 different LFO shapes or through its dynamic Envelope triggering.
The envelope sections can unleash quacky auto-wahs, shooting sonic laser beams or organically rising and falling filter landscapes - all triggered by your playing. While the LFOs lets Float become a mind-bending modulation device that can become everything from a phaser, a harmonic tremolo, a choppy or bubbly step-filter or an automated synth-like sweeper. However, skip the Modulation or envelope sections and the dual sliders come into play. This allows you to use Float as a dual-band EQ for subtle to extreme tone shaping, as a manual filter for on-the-fly futuristic filter sweeps or even for old-school wah-tones. Each filter also sports a resonance control, allowing you to unearth velvety smooth filters, vocal-like formants, screaming sonic squelches and anything in between.
All of this is pretty familiar, but also pretty sweet. Like an amalgamation of all things filtery and good. But where things start to get really different and really fun is when you mess with the Sync and Routing of the two filters. By flicking that tiny toggle labelled Sync to On, the two filters will move like tonal twins - locked in, precise and uniform. This lets you create robotic sequencer-like textures, trippy dual modulations or ultra-long, yet perfectly timed, filter manoeuvres. You can also set it to Off and have them completely free-rolling for organically weaving textures or full-on filter cacophonies. In addition, the filters can be run in either parallel mono, series mono or stereo for all kinds of refined dual movements, cascading filter chaos or lush and dreamy stereo sweeps.
To round off this veritable filter playground, we’ve added an expression in port, that lets you take hands-free control over either the cut-off frequency or LFO Rate, allowing you to keep your fluttery filter modulation as expressive as the music you play.
So, that’s Float… or that’s the essence of Float. We’re sure you’ll unlock sounds from this thing we never knew it was capable of, because it does a lot of good, weird, wild, tame, ugly and absolutely stunning stereo stuff. Float on, friends!
- Dual Moving Filter effects pedal
- Two independent filters, each with control over filter type, cutoff frequency,
- LFO rate, envelope sensitivity, LFO shape, resonance and volume
- True stereo, parallel mono, or series mono operation via top-mounted jacks
- Min/max toggle for precise sculpting of LFO and envelope range
- Sync toggle to link the LFO or envelope elements of Filter 1 to Filter 2
- Expression jack to externally control Cut-off or Rate for each filter
- Soft touch switching with true relay bypass
- Hidden settings for LFO phase and envelope speed
- Pedalboard friendly size
- Made in the USA
- Powered by 9V DC PSU
- (centre -, 2,1 mm, ~100 mA current draw)