“It’s four octaves up or down. Some people would argue that’s too much. We’d argue that we look forward to what people could do with it”: How Boss reimagined the wildest effect on your pedalboard

The Boss XS Poly Shifter Series takes pitch-shifting pedals to new extremes with the compact XS-1 and the treadle-equipped XS-100.

One minute, it’s a car alarm. The next, it’s a chewed-up cassette tape. And perhaps it’s that infinite capacity for metamorphosis – under the boots of players from Tom Morello to Jonny Greenwood – that has made the pitch shifter a pedalboard staple since the ’70s.

Needless to say, Boss is no newcomer to the market. The king of compacts released its first analogue pitch effects – the OC-2 Octaver and VB-2 Vibrato – in the early ’80s, before going digital with 1987’s PS-2 Pitch Shifter/Delay, and pretty much setting the pace for the modern sector with 2010’s PS-6 Harmonist.