Joy Circuit Mood Manipulator

We all need a mood boost these days, and although pedals in general help (a lot) in that department, this is the first time we stumble upon a device that promises to directly mess around with our mood!

Enter the Joy Circuit Mood Manipulator, a ginormous stompbox hand built by a DIY circuit designer brought to fame by JHS Josh in the video at the bottom of this post. This is the guy’s Reverb store.

Undeniably, this pedal triggered a big mood swing before we even started watching the video of it. The joy brought to us at first glance by the “Space/Time Joystick” on the top right corner was soon matched by the sorrow we felt when we learned that this pedal cannot be bought – at least not now, since there are only five copies of it out there.

Incidentally, Joy and Sorrow are also the names of the pedal’s two footswitches.

If you are wondering what it does, the Mood Manipulator is a playful device that feeds an overdrive (Sorrow) into a 3-mode effect (Joy). Here are the modes of the latter:

1. AONS:  Chorus/Flanger
2. CHAOS: Some kind of crazy Delay
3. STARS: Chorus Modulated Delay

Needless to say, the Space/Time joystick controls two varying parameters depending on what mode is selected.

Figuring out the functionality of the Joy Circuit without a manual is kind of tricky, and we suspect that it was the designer’s intention to keep controls vague in order to spur direct experimentation with the knobs.

Therefore the best way for you to get to know this pedal is, once again, to watch the following videos!