Third Man Hardware and Eventide release Knife Drop octave fuzz and synth pedal

October 29, 2024 · 4 sources

Third Man Hardware and Eventide released the Knife Drop on October 29, 2024, a pedal that combines octave fuzz with a monophonic analog synth¹²³. It was developed in collaboration with Jack White, whose guitar tech Dan Mancini is credited by Third Man Hardware¹.

The pedal has two footswitches, one to engage the effect and one to toggle the octaves¹⁴. Three knobs control Synth, Drive and Level, or Attack, Resonance and Cutoff, with the alternate set reached through an Alt button¹⁴. The button above the Active footswitch sets filter routing: green places the filter before the distortion, red places it after⁴. The button above the Octave footswitch sets octave mode: green for octave-up only, red for octave-up plus sub-octave¹⁴. Filter attack is adjustable from 0 to 1000ms¹.

The Knife Drop saves five presets, with room for more via MIDI, and ships with presets by White named Knife Drop, Dub Drop, Chainsaw, Hard Bounce and Obsidian¹. It has an expression pedal input, an LED ladder display, stereo operation via mono/stereo switching, and switchable guitar/line inputs⁴². Guitar Pedal X lists the ports as TRS in, two outputs, expression, Mini-B USB and 9V DC at 500mA³.

The standard black version is $299¹⁴². A limited edition yellow version is $333¹². Sources differ on where the yellow version is sold: Guitar World and Premier Guitar say exclusively through Third Man, on its Reverb storefront and website respectively, while MusicRadar gives a price of £/$399 for a yellow version available direct¹⁴². The black version is available at Third Man Records storefronts and for preorder through Third Man Records in the US, and internationally through Eventide's authorized distributors¹².

Guitar Pedal X called the pedal "somewhat clunky to operate and fairly flawed in several departments," citing the need for a separate controller to change presets and the Mini-B USB port³.