Source Audio announces Artifakt Lo-Fi Elements pedal with seven engines

June 1, 2024 · 4 sources

Source Audio announced the Artifakt Lo-Fi Elements, a compact multi-effects pedal that packs seven lo-fi and glitch engines into one unit, according to coverage published on June 26, 2024¹². The pedal is designed for guitar, bass and keyboard¹.

The seven engines are selected with a central rotary control: Radio, Tape, µVerb, Crush, Ladder, Vinyl and Glitch²³. Radio produces static frequency filtering and noise generation meant to evoke a vintage radio²⁴. Tape blends compression, overdrive, tape flutter and pitch modulation, and also covers chorus, doubling and flanger²⁴. µVerb is a primitive reverb with bouncing echoes in the manner of 8-bit game systems²⁴. Crush handles bit-depth reduction and sample rate reduction²⁴. Ladder is a filter effect inspired by the Moog MF-101, with static, envelope-controlled, LFO-controlled or expression pedal-swept filtering¹⁴. Vinyl adds record crackle, pops and pitch variation¹². Glitch captures fragments of the performance and replays them at random speeds and pitches²⁴.

The pedal has six knobs, two footswitches, toggle switches and a preset button³. The Destruct, Filter, Mix, Vary, Mod, Bandwidth and Option controls change function depending on the selected engine². Connectivity includes stereo inputs and outputs, MIDI In and Thru on 3.5 mm TRS jacks, an expression pedal input and a USB-C port for the Neuro 3 editor software¹². Bypass is switchable between Active Analog and True Bypass¹². Power comes from an optional 9V DC supply drawing 200 mA².

Preset counts differ between reports. Gearnews and Guitar Pedal X say the pedal holds 16 presets onboard and 128 via MIDI¹². Guitar.com says up to 16 presets can be saved onboard, with 12 loaded at the factory, and up to 128 via MIDI³. Delicious Audio lists 12 onboard presets accessible via the two footswitches⁴.

The US list price is USD 349¹²³.

Guitar.com's reviewer rated the pedal 8 out of 10, calling the Glitch mode tricky to get to grips with and noting that deep editing requires the app³.