Following the leak of Walrus Audio's Fundamental effects pedal series on Reddit earlier in the week, the US effects company has brought forward its announcement of delay, reverb, drive and modulation pedals.
There are no demos of the pedals yet – probably because Walrus's hands were forced by the enthusiastic leakers and other guitar media that reported on the pedals' existence before a proper announcement was ready – but we can get a look at the eight-pedal collection of stompboxes, along with some insight from Walrus Audio's President, Colt Westbrook.
There's a delay, reverb, overdrive, distortion, phaser, chorus, tremolo and fuzz pedal, following in the wake of JHS Pedals' own affordable range last year.
Just as striking as the potentially more affordable pricepoint are the slider controls here – a rarity in the mainstream pedal market these days (and a possible magnet for dirt in those gaps). Cool to see nonetheless.
Less promising for us is the decision to position the jack input and output on the tops of the pedals to maximise pedalboard real estate like Walrus's other pedals (yay) but from the leaked Reddit image we looked, the power input jack is positioned on the left side – completely undermining that space gain (boo).
“Cat’s out of the bag!" says Walrus Audio President Colt Westbrook. "Gotta love the internet; secrets were made to unveil :-). This is a leak I’m happy to comment on. I think what we’ve built is something a guitar player could get their hands on really early, but keep the spot on their board for a long time.
"Growing up playing guitar, there were several pedal lines that were part of my guitar journey. The original Danelectro pedals like Fab tone, Cool-Cat Chorus, Ibanez Soundtank series, Ibanez 10 Series, or even the ubiquitous Boss lineup we all had access to.
I wanted Walrus to be part of the guitar journey earlier
"I spent an inappropriate amount of time in front of an amp playing a DD3 after my paper route every day. I still have the ODR-1 I bought from Daddy-O’s in Stillwater, Oklahoma on my board today. I wanted Walrus to be part of the guitar journey earlier but incorporate the audio fidelity and build quality that we’ve spent the last 12 years developing for our core line and Mako series. I wanted us to build something that would make it super easy for newer pedal users to dial in great sounds, but for them to also be something a professional would be happy taking with them on tour."
Good to hear – it's always nice to be reminded that the people behind gear companies haven't lost touch with their roots. And we are very much in favour of this kind of thing… especially as we're Walrus Audio fans. Just less enthused about that side input. Maybe it's our fault for trying to squeeze too many pedals on our 'board.
So when can we all get them? And how much are they? Well, this is the problem with announcements prompted by leaks (probably caused by a retailer listing the pedals in error): there is no official word on price or availability yet.
