At Winter NAMM 2011, under the “Compact” line of pedals, TC Electronic released seven new pedals in a more standard footprint. I spoke about about the Corona Chorus in my previous article, and it is very promising. Now you might say, “So what? There were lots of pedals release at NAMM.” True, but from my standpoint, this is a major departure for TC Electronic; not in terms of engineering and quality, but of its movement into the mainstream.
Think about it: For years TC Electronic has been producing incredible effects that are always highly rated, and known for their high quality. The only problem for me, and while it might not seem like a big thing to others, but it is a big thing to me, was the form-factor of TC pedals. I have always had a problem with their size and shape.
People might say that it’s the tone that should matter and not the form-factor, and I would agree to a point. But from a practical perspective, because of their size and shape, I’d have to sacrifice too much real estate on my board to accommodate an original TC pedal. So though I’ve loved the pedals for their tones, I’ve always passed on them purely because of I’d have to change my board. That is definitely changed with TC Electronic’s new Compact Line.
The Compact Line in a Nutshell
As I mentioned above, the Compact line includes seven pedals. It’s great that TC came out with all of them at once as opposed to staging the releases. It definitely makes a bigger splash. One thing that I can say about the Compact line is that TC had versatility in mind with these pedals. All the modulation effects include TC’s new TonePrint feature, which lets you load settings by major artists into the pedal directly via a USB connection. How cool is that?
Anyway, here are video clips I found on YouTube that really demonstrate the pedals’ capabilities:
Flashback Delay
Corona Chorus
Vortex Flanger
Hall of Fame Reverb
Shaker Vibrato
Mojo Mojo Overdrive
Dark Matter Distortion
The pedals that really catch my ear are the Corona Chorus and the Vibrato, which is VERY cool. Unlike tremolo, vibrato is a pitch modulation, where tremolo is a volume modulation. That could really come in handy!
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