Tone Report Weekly Issue 118 | Page 54

EARTHQUAKER DEVICES NIGHT WIRE REVIEW BY DAVID A. EVANS STREET PRICE $195.00 Among modulation pedals, EarthQuaker Devices’s new Night Wire fills an interesting niche. Billed as a harmonic tremolo, the sparkling black-and-purple pedal combines traditional tremolo, filtration, and phasing. This fusion produces some pretty useful twists on otherwise standard effects. The Night Wire provides Uni-Vibe-like phasing, auto-wah envelope filtration, and even a more straightforward, shimmering tremolo all at the twist of a few knobs. According to EarthQuaker Devices, the pedal combines a traditional tremolo circuit with a harmonic filtration 54 GEAR REVIEW // circuit. The latter circuit consists of two filters, one high-pass, and the other low-pass. After the signal passes through these filters, a low frequency oscillator (LFO) further modulates the signal. What makes the Night Wire unique, says the company, is that the filters themselves are adjustable. Fortunately, EarthQuaker Devices didn’t skimp on the number of possible effects settings because the Night Wire provides six combinations of tremolo and filtration via two “master” toggle switches. The toggles offer two options for the tremolo circuit and three options for EarthQuaker Devices Night Wire the filtration circuit. While the tremolo’s Rate switch allows for either Attack or Manual mode, the filtration circuit’s Frequency toggle allows for those two modes plus a fun LFO mode. The LFO filtration mode sets the two pass filters to sweep, back and forth, thereby creating a cool sound that’s a little like phasing. Perhaps the most fun of all, however, are the two Attack modes, both of which directly link their effects to the strength of the input signal. As might be expected, changes to the Frequency and Rate toggles create radically different sounds. A Manual Frequency setting