Electro-Harmonix Freeze

The Electro-Harmonix Freeze is a Sound Retainer pedal: a digital effect that samples whatever your guitar is playing at the moment you stomp the footswitch and holds that sound, at that volume and with that timbre, for as long as you leave it engaged. Electro-Harmonix sums it up as the ability to "sample and hold notes or chords with infinite sustain!"¹ Premier Guitar's reviewer put it more plainly: "Simply put, the Freeze sustains any note or chord you play."²

That single trick opens up a lot of ground. MusicRadar's review found the effect "ideal for creating thick soundscapes and drones with your guitar," especially when the frozen sound is run through other effects like wah, tremolo or delay placed after it in the chain³. Because the held sound is a snapshot of your signal, everything downstream of the pedal keeps processing it while your hands are free to play something else on top.

How the Freeze works

The Freeze is not a looper, even though Electro-Harmonix describes its capture as "real time sample capture with perfect looping"¹. The distinction matters to how you play it. MusicRadar's reviewer Stuart explained that "unlike a looper it takes a snapshot of the signal running through the pedal at the moment" you stomp it, and sustains that snapshot until the footswitch is reset³. A looper records a passage you play over time; the Freeze grabs an instant and holds it.

That instant can be a single note or a full chord, and once held it behaves like a sustained pad under whatever you play next. Run into delay, tremolo or wah, the frozen sound becomes a moving backdrop. The Effect Level knob sets the volume of the sustained signal, so you can sit the drone under your playing or push it up as the featured voice².

The controls and the three modes

The control set is minimal. Premier Guitar's later piece on the pedal noted that "the pedal only requires one knob for volume, one toggle for latching or fast/slow swell modes, and a footswitch"⁵. Everything on the panel:

The mode switch is where the playing character lives. MusicRadar's review describes the toggle as flipping "between Fast, Slow or Latch modes"³. Slow mode "gives a variable-speed fade in and out to the sustain, which, when you're switching between chords, is much smoother"³. Latch holds the frozen sound after you release your foot, so you can set a chord droning and leave it there while you play over it.

History and the Cockerell design

The Freeze dates to 2010¹, but its circuit has a longer lineage. Premier Guitar's review reports that the Freeze "is derived from the HOG's Freeze Gliss function," the hold feature of Electro-Harmonix's HOG synthesizer pedal². The designer behind it is David Cockerell, the longtime EHX engineer who also worked on the HOG⁵.

The idea itself goes back further. Cockerell explained to Premier Guitar that "back in the '70s, the EHX team had worked on the idea for a sustain pedal," using an approach the piece calls intelligent-splice-single-cycle-looping. The concept was revived in the early 2000s once DSP chips made it practical, while Cockerell was working on the HOG⁵. Premier Guitar's reviewer argued the result stood on its own: "This wasn't some new iteration of some other effect, a crazy fuzz or a weird flanger. This was a new category."⁵

Bill Frisell has been seen using one during a solo set, which gives a sense of the territory the pedal covers for ambient and textural playing⁵.

What reviewers said

Published reviews were positive about the pedal's creative value. Premier Guitar's verdict: "From subtle to radical, the Freeze is a device that inspires creative playing without being gimmicky," and a great tool for composing music and harmony by yourself². The same reviewer later credited its simplicity for leaving the creative decisions to the player⁵.

The Pico Deep Freeze

Electro-Harmonix also makes a scaled-down descendant, the Pico Deep Freeze, a Sound Retainer and Sustainer in the compact Pico chassis⁴. Guitar.com's demo describes it as "a scaled down version of the Freeze Sound Retainer"⁶. It goes beyond the original's feature set with layering, adjustable attack and decay speeds, glissando, dedicated volume controls, and three modes of operation: Latch, Moment, and Auto⁴⁷. Its Latch mode "holds the frozen sound each time the footswitch is pressed, releasing it upon bypass," and its SPEED/LAYER knob adjusts attack and decay time or layering amount depending on the mode⁸. It draws 100mA at 9.0VDC and also uses buffered bypass⁴.

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