The Polarbear Effects Ascender is the newly released delay twin of the Croatian company’s Drowner, hence a creative fuzz/bitcrusher/delay multi-effect guitar pedal. These two siblings look a helluva lot like each other.
The fuzz, a heavy one, is of the Silicon kind, and it’s first in the chain and has its own footswitch (the one on the right).
Delay and Bitcrusher follow suit, in an order that can be inverted through the toggle switch on the top left – the one under it will bypass the bitcrusher entirely. The left footswitch will trigger them.
Just like the Drowner, the Ascender has a single FX loop output that requires a stereo male to dual mono TS cables, allowing to insert any additional effects between the fuzz and the delay/bitcrusher.
Have a listen to the otherwordly sounds of this pedal in the videos below.
Polarbear Effects Ascender, Builder’s Notes
Ascender is a fuzz/bitcrusher/delay multi-effect guitar pedal.
Heavy silicon based FUZZ is always the first effect in the chain that can be independently engaged with a right footswitch.
This pedal was designed for you to build your pedalboard around it, featuring an FX loop that requires a TRS Y-cable: stereo male to dual mono TS cables, you can put any additional effects between FUZZ and BITCRUSHER/DELAY. (R is Send, T is Return).
BITCRUSHER & DELAY are engaged with the left footswitch, but BITCRUSHER can be bypassed with a CRUSH toggle switch.
You can change the order of BITCHRUSHER & DELAY in the effects chain with the ORDER switch.
FDR setting enables you to have the bitcrusher very reactive to pick attack that further goes into delay.
FDC lets the delay repeats activate the bitcrusher.VOLUME controls does not affect the FUZZ directly, it controls the output volume of BITCRUSHER & REVERB at the end of the effects chain.
Power
This product should be used with high-quality isolated power supply. It uses 9V DC negative center 2.1mm barrel. Unregulated power supplies as well as higher voltages may result in suboptimal noise performance and even damage your unit.
Current draw for this pedal is ~110mA. Please don’t underpower the unit.Size (L x W x H)
11.7 x 9.2 x 5.7 cm
4.6 x 3.62 x 2.24 inch
1590BB enclosure
