Faint Vox
A cold, robotic, electroclash vocal effect — nasal formant honk, distortion grit, and digital bitcrush, fronted by a bipolar pitch knob. Built for vocals, plays great on guitar too. Inspired by the heavily-processed synth-punk/new-wave vocal sound.
Faint Vox
A vocal-processing effect that chases a cold, nasal, robotic, electroclash voice — the heavily-distorted, formant-honked, digitally-degraded vocal of synth-punk new-wave records. The signal is summed to mono, run through a clean granular pitch shifter on a bipolar Pitch knob (center detent = unity, turn down to drop an octave, up to climb one), then shaped by a resonant formant stage that adds the nasal "honk," driven through one of three distortion flavors, degraded by a bitcrush/decimator, and finally colored with chorus or metallic ring modulation. Stack an octave-up harmony with the footswitch, drop in a sub-octave or telephone-radio EQ on the DIPs, and quantize the pitch to whole semitones for a stepped-robot effect. Voiced to sit musical, not just harsh.
Signal Chain
Input (L+R)/2 → Pitch shift (bipolar, optional semitone quantize) → + Harmony (octave-up, FS2) + Sub (octave-down, DIP 2) → Formant honk (resonant band-pass, SW2 voicing) → Drive (SW1 flavor, amount = KNOB 3) → Bitcrush (KNOB 5) → Telephone EQ (DIP 3) → DC block → Modulation (SW3) → dry/wet Mix → Level → NaN-guard + clamp → stereo output.
Knobs
| Knob | Function | Behavior |
|---|---|---|
| KNOB 1 | Level | Output level (0–2×). |
| KNOB 2 | Pitch | Bipolar. Center is detented to unity (no shift). Turn counter-clockwise to pitch down to −12 semitones; clockwise to pitch up to +12. Clean granular pitch shifter. |
| KNOB 3 | Drive | Distortion amount: fully left = clean, fully right = destroyed. Scales smoothly within whatever flavor SW1 selects. |
| KNOB 4 | Formant | Intensity of the nasal/robotic formant honk — raises the resonant band-pass blend and its resonance. The headline "vowel" tone control. |
| KNOB 5 | Crush | Bitcrush + sample-rate reduction: fully left = clean, fully right = ~6-bit / ~6 kHz digital grit. |
| KNOB 6 | Mix | Dry/wet blend. Fully left = dry; fully right = 100% processed. |
3-Position Toggles
SW1 — Drive Voice
SW1 picks the flavor; the Drive knob (KNOB 3) sets how hard it's pushed.
SW2 — Formant Voicing
SW3 — Modulation
DIP Switches
| DIP | Function |
|---|---|
| DIP 1 | Pitch Quantize — snaps the pitch shift to whole semitones for a stepped, robotic pitch instead of a continuous glide. |
| DIP 2 | Sub Octave — adds an octave-down layer under the voice for thickness and menace. |
| DIP 3 | Telephone EQ — steep band-limit (~400–3000 Hz) for a thin radio/telephone voice. |
| DIP 4 | Reserved — MIDI is always parsed regardless; held for future use. |
Footswitches
| Switch | Action |
|---|---|
| FS1 | Bypass (relay-style true bypass; fires on release). |
| FS2 | Harmony on/off — stacks an octave-up ghost voice that tracks the Pitch knob. |
| FS1+FS2 | 0.5 s hold — Expression Set Mode. |
| FS1+FS2 | 2 s hold — clear expression mappings. |
| FS1+FS2 | at power-up — DFU bootloader. |
MIDI
| Message | Mapping |
|---|---|
| CC 14–19 | Knobs 1–6 (with takeover). |
| CC 20 | Bypass (≥ 64 = toggle). |
| CC 21 | Harmony (≥ 64 = toggle). |
Expression Jack
Defaults unmapped — suggested target: KNOB 2 (Pitch) for foot-controlled pitch dives/climbs, or KNOB 6 (Mix) to swell the effect in. Assign via FS1+FS2 0.5 s Set Mode.
LEDs
- LED 1: Bypass status (engaged).
- LED 2: Harmony active.