Third Man Hardware & Eventide Audio: Knife Drop Fuzz/Synth Stompbox

Jack White [Tape Op #82] likes a certain guitar tone, right? A fuzz with a low octave and maybe some high octave piercing tone. Union Tube & Transistor hooked me up with their collab Third Man Bumble Buzz guitar pedal years ago, and I love the fact that it has no knobs and a perfect Jack White sound. On Knife Drop, our pals at Eventide Audio helped White create a futuristic version of his guitar sound – with the obligatory fuzz plus high and low octave generators – plus they added in a tracking monophonic synthesizer. What? Note that the synth and octave effects can (thankfully) run simultaneously! I'm going to ignore the Italian movie-themed design and back story, but Knife Drop has three knobs across the top that have a press-and-hold LED button for accessing Alternate Endings! controls (creating a total of six). There's a bypass footswitch with another LED button above it to change if the filter is placed pre or post distortion. The footswitch to the right engages the octave generator with an LED button above it to select high or high plus low octaves. It's got a single 1/4-inch input that can sneakily be fed a TRS cable for stereo input, and it has two built-in 1/4-inch stereo outs. A 1/4-inch expression pedal input allows for extra fun, and a micro-USB jack accommodates updating/programming (via Eventide's H90 Control app) plus MIDI input. As you might guess, it can also store settings – very handy on a pedal with this wide of a variety of possible sounds.

I plugged in an electric guitar and a small amp, then went to work without reading anything about Knife Drop, with absolutely no idea of what the pedal was capable of. I figured it out pretty quickly, but the three knobs' Alternate Endings! control use thwarted me until I realized it had to be held down to activate. The synth tracking on this pedal is interesting; I've been used to doing things like this for decades with an Electro-Harmonix Micro Synthesizer pedal with very random, mixed, and frustrating results. The folks at Eventide know a bit about digital audio, and they nailed the usability factor and playability of Knife Drop’s analog synth processing. Featuring a limited number of controls and a guitar-tracking synth that doesn't "get lost" is probably smart but learning how the knobs and switches affect each other is harder to figure out. However, Knife Drop’s synth always makes interesting sounds and never completely drops out, whereas my EHX Micro Synthesizer constantly filters itself into oblivion.

I went to mess with a previous session that I had tracked, mixed, and produced. Even though this pedal can handle line level signal, I hooked up the Knife Drop via a pair of Radial EXTC [Tape Op #100] so I could process tracks from Pro Tools and then record them back in for this scary remix. When feeding kick and snare from a drum recording into the pedal, I got cool pulsing and gurgling tones that reminded me of the renowned Silver Apples band. I could imagine this as a compositional starting point for an awesome synth/drum combo. This process resulted in too much new information to fit in my final, denser remix! On electric bass, the changing notes would open up crazy filtering at times, adding all sorts of chaos while also holding a big, steady drone in key. It felt like someone had overdubbed a classic Moog. On lead vocals, it'd turn into Martian squeaks or demon growls with sputtering noises at times. Scary!

The multitude of little random things that happen with this pedal is an important part of what it does and what makes it so cool. I'd have something burbling along, and then all of a sudden, high notes would pop up out of nowhere, keeping the music interesting. In a time where DAWs present constantly predictable results, it's fun to have a device that is highly controllable while at the same time capable of producing new sounds every time. Sending mono sources in and getting a stereo out was cool, as the effect is definitely stereo at times and fun to dive into. Notes seemed to sustain a long time after the input died out – like eight seconds! That made for some awkward sections in the song I was remixing, but it was also super spooky and interesting. I sent the band this remix, where I'd replaced everything but the drums with Knife Drop-ped tracks, and they said, "Sounds insane!"

Is Knife Drop something every musician and recording dork needs? If one is looking for something that'll blow up a track and create new ideas out of it, then yes. I am not sending mine back; something I figured out within five minutes of use. I also feel I'll keep discovering new uses while learning the subtleties of how to better control and program this wild pedal. Let the journey begin!