Electro-Harmonix has expanded its Pico Series with Shimmer, a “cosmic” reverb pedal that promises otherworldly ambience from three distinct sounds.
The Pico Series is the storied NYC-based guitar effects pedal brand’s super-compact digital mini pedals range, and all that DSP power under the hood of these pedalboard-friendly enclosures allows it to offer something a little bit weird, off-piste options for less ordinary electric guitar tones.
It has given us the Intelligent Harmony Machine, the two or three-part harmonizer you can stick in your pocket. The Pico Atomic Cluster presented us with a glitch-cum-synth pedal that takes the signal from your electric guitar and deconstructs it. The Swello launched the POG2’s polyphonic attack filter as a standalone effect. Now this, the Shimmer.
Like the Swello, the Shimmer is a pedal that draws inspiration from the EHX back catalogue. EHX’s superlative Oceans Reverb plants the seed, and the three variations on the Shimmer theme descend from this. For such a small pedal there are plenty of controls to get acquainted with.
There is a Scene button at the top of the pedal that cycles through Intergalactic, Off-World, and Etherdust modes.
The latter is your “glitchy” option in which a randomised delay time is applied to the reverb tails, “ creating stutters ranging from short granular sparkles to distinct glitch echoes”.
Intergalactic is what we’d recognise as a shimmer reverb, although by the sounds of it this one will be a little more sci-fi, your tone cheerfully ferried to the outer reaches of the galaxy and all that, carried forth upon “polyphonic octaves, reverb, modulated delay and compression” – and a string synthesis engine because why not? Let’s go nuts.
Rounding out the trio is the Off-World shimmer, described as a more mellow option with delay modulation, vintage synth vibes, and as the name might suggest this might be more chilled out, bliss at the touch of a footswitch, and so on, but still astral and weird.
There are four knobs, all of which pull double shifts. Primary functions include Blend, Time, Voice and Depth. Press and hold the Scene button and the Secondary functions come online, and the aforementioned controls now adjust Reverb Mix, Delay, Depth and Rate.
And there is more. Press and hold that footswitch and you access Infinite Reverb Mode. The Pico Shimmer has digital, analogue and hybrid buffered bypass modes. It ships with its own power adapter and is priced $149.
For more details, head over to Electro-Harmonix.
