Finnish developer and ‘weird sound connoisseur’ Olli Heikkinen has launched a new effect pedal company, Pochard, that he says is focused on sonic discovery and modularity.
“We think there are no wrong sounds and embrace all sorts of aesthetics,” explains Heikkinen. “In our devices, there is a possibility to dial broken or weird kind of sounds as well as the beautiful ones. We think that it’s important to give the user the experience to go just a little bit further.”
Their first pedal is Bear in Blue, an electric signal distortion unit, paired with a Steiner-Parker-inspired state variable filter and dry mixing output stage. The filter section has control voltage capabilities. It is designed with bass, guitar and synthesizers in mind.
Here’s an demo of Bear in Blue in action:
Pricing and Availability
Bear in Blue is available now for 258 € inc. VAT. More examples of the Bear in Blue, along with creative approaches to sound design with pedals, are available at the Pochard blog.
sounds great, but holy price tag!!
That’s a normal boutique pedal price… There are plenty of much more pricey pedals. It’s a small company, not Boss, and even Boss’s Waza pedals are almost as expensive.
this should have a wah pedal built in hmm. maybe one of those plugs is an EXP in?
what a weird ecosystem it would be to have guitar pedals as a modular synth, quad lfos in a pedal? lol heh. but really i’d buy a few of those. Or at least one of these if it had a built-in foot controller, maybe a moog filter option or A/B mix between both filters? that’d be grand as an effect for anything. LFO welcome in a future version too.
According to the online manual, it has an expression jack to control the sweep of the filter.
that would be dope paired with the Minta Foundry Lewis
Sounds fantastic
if a pedal company wants to focus on modularity, every knob should contain a cv in to control it with. until then, it’s just marketing jargon.
Nonsense. Not even synths have an CV input for everything you might want to control. For example, most synths don’t even allow to modulate the filter resonance, as manufacturer don’t seem to think anyone might be wanting to do such.