The Dwarfcraft Devices Grazer was one of the newly released pedals visitors of the 2nd L.A. Stompbox Exhibit had the chance to check out this past weekend at the Sunset Blvd. Sam Ash store.
Hosted in an attractively chunky, orange “brick-style” enclosure, this stompbox belongs to the rather trendy category of granular pitch shifting loopers and, like most pedals designed by the Eau Claire, WI-based manufacturer, it’s made with the creative guitarist in mind.
The Grazer grabs sections of your signal varying in size (micro-samples), repeats them, pitch shifts them, does forward/reverse playback and other weird things to them. The grabbing can be triggered by the Grab footswitch or timed automatically when the AGR switch is engaged – in which circumstance the Grab knob will define this function’s speed.
The other knobs (Mix, Pitch and Size) are self-explanatory, but not these two toggle switches:
XPD – Chooses the destination for Expression Pedal control. In the right position the expression pedal will control “size.” In the left position control is sent to “pitch.”
F/R – Toggles between forward and reverse playback of grains. The effect can be subtle in some settings, it’s most obvious with a percussive input and a large “size” setting.
Here’s something the manufacturer recommends trying in the pedal’s manual:
If you have a small to medium sample size dialed in on your grazer you can send that to a high-gain distortion to transform the “pitch” control into a harmonic selector. It will take some fiddling with the mix, and the distortion controls, but when you get there… I think you’ll enjoy it.
The Grazer looks like a lot of fun, and sells for $225, check out a bunch of video demos below!
