Tone Report Weekly Issue 110 | Page 18

SCHUMANN PLL Admittedly, all of Schumann’s designs are original, but most of them are distortions and overdrives with a few interesting hiccups. The PLL—which stands for Phase Locked Loop—is a monstrous unit with double-digit knobs and switches, plus separate inputs for a Drone switch, a “Moment” switch and an external arpeggiator. The pedal is the size of a small loaf of bread and doesn’t sound like anything else on the market; the closest comparison to the PLL is an all-analog harmonizer with a built-in squarewave fuzz, but this meager description in no way does the PLL justice. In its higher settings, the PLL can force a guitar to abandon all harmonic content and force itself into a purely mechanical timbre that simply defies classification. 18 TONE TALK // Uncloned Melody: 9 Boxes that Sound like Nothing Else