What's a layman's definition of the Phase-Locked Loop function?
Something that takes a signal in, locks on to it, makes an identical signal, and as the signal changes, it detects the phase changes between the two and adjusts itself. It's how radio tuners work now, locking on to a station.
People seem to have a hard time describing exactly what it sounds like. What does it sound like?
It doesn't sound like anything else. It's 3-part harmony it's all a square wave — it's unique. Powerful. It can sound tubular, you can make it sound like a Theremin or an outrageous fuzz tone. It reacts and acts like no other pedal that exists.
The PLL took two years to make?
It took me two years to get it to interface with a guitar. A guitar is such a crazily erratic signal — these things want clear signals. The interface took a lot of trial and error. It tracks a keyboard signal much easier — that's very regular. There are so many harmonics when you hit a guitar string.
Why's your tracking circuit so good? How's it different from other analog tracking circuits?
Before I invented the PLL, I had an MS-03 signal processor. You plug a guitar into it, then plug a synthesizer into it, and I built a high resonance band pass filter, so whatever note I hit it would track that note, hit it, and stay on it with infinite resonance, feeding back on itself. The PLL is a different animal. That was a pitch-to-voltage converter. Mine locks on to the signal like a smart bomb locks on to a target, and the tracking control lets you adjust how well it can lock on and whether it can falter, like when it's all vibrato-y, it's trying to find the signal. As the signal goes out of pitch, the phase starts to change, and it keeps correcting itself. That was one of the hardest things to figure out, to limit the amount of controls you can put on it. I limited it down to 3 controls for tracking. I could've had 50, but then no one could figure out how to use the thing...
Some people can't figure out how to use it now! Do you think there's a learning curve to your pedals?
