The Discomfort Designs TMA-1 Jupiter made it into our list of the Best New Pedals of 2021 thanks to the vote of YouTube channel Pedal of The Day (their videos is embedded below). It’s a PPL-based ring mod pedal that squarely belongs to the quirky/creative niche.
The sounds emanated by this device vary from the otherworldy to the distorted – even though it doesn’t actually have a gain knob. Explaining what it does is rather challenging, hence we’ll defer this task to the builder:
[There are] two fat transformers inside wrestling with a PLL tone decoder. The decoder chip is used as a ring modulator/carrier frequency generator, in turn modulating the ring modulated sound. Yep, it’s a ring-modulator, fed into a ring-modulator.The Anomaly knob sets the carrier frequency, from dirty lo-fi tones to screaming rhythmic Martian anarchy.
The Lux/Aeterna switch doubles the carrier frequency and switches from the analog carrier modulating the input signal and instead assigns the input signal to modulate the carrier. The result is faster modulation and a brighter, sharper timbre.
The Infinity footswitch allows for even greater levels of insanity by allowing crosstalk between the ring-modulators, the Infinity control allows you to adjust the level of argument between the two.
The mixer section gives independent control of the effect level, clean signal, and blend between the two.
If you are wondering what kind of sounds this pedal makes, look and hear no further than the video below.
We added the Discomfort Designs TMA-1 Jupiter to our article about the Best Ring Modulator Pedals.
Discomfort Designs TMA-1 Jupiter, Builder’s Notes
TMA-1 (or, Jupiter: and Beyond the Infinite)
Deepspace Rhythmic Signal Supercollider
Unstable, Insane, Volatile. Two fat transformers inside wrestling with a PLL tone decoder. The decoder chip is used as a ring modulator/carrier frequency generator, in turn modulating the ring modulated sound. Yep, it’s a ring-modulator, fed into a ring-modulator.
The Anomaly knob sets the carrier frequency, from dirty lo-fi tones to screaming rhythmic Martian anarchy.
The Lux/Aeterna switch doubles the carrier frequency and switches from the analog carrier modulating the input signal and instead assigns the input signal to modulate the carrier. The result is faster modulation and a brighter, sharper timbre.
The Infinity footswitch allows for even greater levels of insanity by allowing crosstalk between the ring-modulators, the Infinity control allows you to adjust the level of argument between the two.
The mixer section gives independent control of the effect level, clean signal, and blend between the two.
This is the machine to summon the Starchild!
