The Catalinbread STS-88 is a flange + reverb compact pedal by the Portland builder, whose engineering team, apparently, has a true passion for flangers.
The STS-88’s circuit was created after countless hours spent researching and playing with the most established flanger pedals, with the intent of designing a pedal with a unique yet classic sound, that worked as well both on clean and dirty tones.
As a homage to their shoegaze inclinations (and the ones of many of their fans), they decided to add a reverb after the flanger.
Have a listen to the STS-88 flanger in the videos below.
Catalinbread STS-88 Flanger, Builder’s Notes
After having acquired more flangers than should be allowed by law, we sealed ourselves away in the laboratory to study the nuts and bolts of the effect. What emerged was the STS-88, a love letter to the flanger. Our development sector contains units of all types, from the ubiquitous Boss HF-2 and EHX Electric Mistress to more exotic pieces like the Effectron ADM256 and MXR Flanger/Doubler.
In one late night frenzy of pedal swapping, we discovered that enveloping a flanger in a cavernous reverb really did the trick. Finding that this pristine combination suffered at the hands of extraneous noise, we embedded a very gentle noise gate to stifle inherent guitar hiss and LFO clock noise. The result is an extremely musical flanger that sounds like an extension of your own instrument, but it can also fuel up and take off when a little dirt of any kind is applied beforehand.
