Catalinbread CSIDMAN

The Catalinbread CSIDMAN is a delay pedal from Oregon-based Catalinbread, released in 2016, that imitates the sound of a skipping portable CD player¹²³. Behind its five knobs sits a digital delay that can work as a normal pedal, but its real character comes from Cuts and Latch controls that chop and stutter the repeats in pseudo-random ways¹.

Gearnews described it as a delay with stutter and glitch behavior: "It mangles your delay sounds beautifully and sometimes sounds just broken, but in a musical way."⁴

A delay that imitates a skipping CD player

The CSIDMAN's whole reason for existing is the sound of a portable CD player losing its place. Delicious Audio describes it as having "Cuts and Latch controls that lets you create the sound of a skipping portable CD player"¹. The effect is not a steady modulation or a set pattern: the pedal interrupts and repeats fragments of the delay line, so notes stutter, jump and drop out the way a scratched disc did.

Although it can function as a standard digital delay pedal, that skipping behavior is what sets it apart from ordinary digital delays¹. The Time knob governs the total available delay time, from slapback-shortness up to around 700ms, and Feed controls the amount of feedback, which also sets the intensity of all the onboard effects⁶⁵.

Where the idea comes from

The design is rooted in old portable CD player technology, which used an internal memory buffer to stop the music from skipping⁴. Catalinbread's design approach, as reported by Delicious Audio, starts from a question: "What are the artifacts of antiquated technologies that have merit in a musical context?" The intent was "a pedal that intentionally embraces technological limitations that musicians haven't widely utilized"¹. In other words, the flaw that engineers spent years trying to eliminate, the skip, becomes the effect itself.

Is the skipping random?

The behavior is pseudo-random. As Delicious Audio puts it, "Though its behavior is pseudo-random, the CSIDMAN gives you some degree of control over it, though, fortunately, not entirely"¹. The knobs shape how often and how violently the signal cuts and latches, but the exact timing of the skips stays unpredictable, which is a large part of the pedal's appeal for players who want a performance element rather than a fixed pattern.

The 2025 Ghost Edition

In 2025 Catalinbread released the CSIDMAN Ghost Edition, a newly updated version of the 2016 pedal³. It keeps the core design while introducing new spectral textures, and it runs a 100% analog dry path that preserves your original tone while the delay line stays digital³.

The Ghost Edition's control changes:

• The two knobs on the original, Cuts and Latch, are combined into one CUTS/LATCH knob⁵
• A new GHOST knob adds a sample rate reducer to the entire effect, decreasing the fidelity and giving extreme lo-fi aliasing on top of the random skips and cuts⁶
• The Ghost Edition does not run on batteries⁵

What a reviewer said

Gearnews' reviewer, writing in 2016, liked the pedal in measured amounts but flagged its intensity: "I quite like it in small doses. However, I think you may want to do your Jonny Greenwood Radiohead impressions using one"⁴. He compared the sudden loss of control to a ZVex Fuzz Factory self-oscillating, suggesting the pedal may become tiring as an always-on effect⁴. The same review noted the original price of EUR 239 RRP⁴.

Delicious Audio included the CSIDMAN in its roundup of glitch, stutter and granular pedals, noting that "the CSIDMAN, pronounced \"Discman\", has Cuts and Latch controls that let it create the sound of a skipping portable CD player"¹.

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