The Micro Synthesizer is a guitar synthesizer pedal from Electro-Harmonix. Barry Rudolph's review describes its aim plainly: "The Micro Synthesizer allows a guitarist to make some of the same sounds as the Moog Synthesizer."1 It does that with two working parts: a voice mixer that stacks octave voices against the dry guitar, and a voltage-controlled filter sweep that shapes the combined sound. It sits in the synth pedal family alongside related EHX designs like the Micro Synth and the Bass Micro Synthesizer.
What it does
The pedal's sound comes from two sections working together.
The Voice Mixer. It offers four mixable sound sources for processing by the filter: the guitar itself, an octave above, an octave below, and square waves. Mixing these against each other is what turns a guitar signal into something closer to a synth voice, and the balance you set here shapes everything downstream.1
The Filter Sweep. This is the Moog-like filter at the heart of the pedal, and it has four controls1:
| Control | What it does |
|---|---|
| Resonance | Adjusts the resonance of the filter sweep1 |
| Start Frequency | Sets where the sweep begins1 |
| Stop Frequency | Sets where the sweep ends1 |
| Rate of Sweep | Sets how fast the sweep runs1 |
The filter's resonance control is adjustable on the pedal, a feature Electro-Harmonix also lists on the related Bass Micro Synthesizer.2
What reviewers said
Barry Rudolph, reviewing the pedal, highlighted one design choice in particular: the trigger sensitivity lets a player run filtered lead sounds and unfiltered chords without having to switch anything. His verdict on that: "a good feature I reckon!"1
Videos
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EHX
JetCityMusic
Sources (2)
- Electro-Harmonix Micro Synthesizer, barryrudolph.com, 2021
- Bass Micro Synth, Electro-Harmonix
