Free The Tone Cosmic Wave CW-1Y

The Free The Tone Cosmic Wave CW-1Y is a compact digital delay pedal that Free The Tone calls a "MULTIPLE FILTERING DELAY": the idea is not just to repeat your notes, but to filter those repeats so the trail evolves as it decays. Several filter effects are built in and several can be used at the same time, including the company's own COSMIC FILTER, a Bandpass filter, a 3 Band EQ and a Tone control¹.

Guitar World's reviewer, Trevor Curwen, placed the pedal in Free The Tone's delay lineage: it "retains the sound quality of Free The Tone's Flight Time and Future Factory delays but in a much more compact" format². Those earlier pedals include the Flight Time FT-2Y, which offers a Delay Phase function, and the Future Factory FF-1Y, an RF phase modulation delay³⁴. The Cosmic Wave takes a different angle: rather than phase manipulation, its character comes from what the filters do to consecutive repeats.

A delay built around filters on the repeats

The filter section is what separates the CW-1Y from a standard digital delay. Free The Tone says the tone filters can make the delay sound full or far removed from the dry tone, and that its original COSMIC FILTER produces a space-like effect sound that adds a new color to the delay¹.

Guitar World's review broke down the two headline filter functions:

• Cosmic function: five different filter settings that make consecutive repeats in the trail get progressively weirder. Curwen called it "the most unique feature" of the pedal².
• Lo-Fi function: adjusts the number of bits in the delay sound over a range from 24 down to eight, in 1-bit units. Free The Tone describes this as reproducing 80s and 90s digital delay nuances and bitcrusher-like delay sounds²¹.
• Bandpass filter: a choice of five frequency ranges to focus the repeats².

There is also a reverse delay mode. Free The Tone says it produces a smoother, more musical reverse sound, and Curwen found it "can deliver deliciously smooth psych effects if you select it without any dry sound"¹².

Delicious Audio added the Cosmic Wave to its article about the best experimental delay pedals when the pedal was new, in September 2022, describing it as "a compact, mono digital delay with multiple filter functions"⁵. The maker's own specification lists two outputs, OUT/L and OUT/R¹, so players wanting a stereo delay path should weigh both descriptions before deciding how to wire it up.

The controls, presets and footswitches

The front panel keeps things compact, with three main knobs that each do more than their label suggests. According to Guitar World, besides controlling Dry/Wet Mix, Feedback and Tone, each knob can adjust two further parameters, mainly relating to modulation, when operation screens are called up by the Home switch².

Four buttons handle the rest: Save, Home, Cursor L and Cursor R². Under the hood the pedal holds 128 user presets and 11 factory presets¹.

Two footswitches handle live use: a Bypass footswitch and a Tap footswitch, with tap tempo on the Tap switch and footswitch access to two presets².

Power and connections

The pedal runs on DC 9V from a center-negative AC adapter, sold separately, or on a 006P type (9V) 6LF22 alkaline battery¹.

Connections are: one 1/4-inch TRS input jack (IN), three 1/4-inch TS jacks (OUT/L, OUT/R and EXP/CV/FS), a DC9 input jack for the AC adapter, and a 3.5mm stereo mini plug MIDI IN¹. The EXP/CV/FS jack accepts an expression pedal, a control voltage source or a footswitch, and the output load impedance is specified as 10kΩ or higher¹.

On the bypass question: the dry signal passes analog from input to output, mixed with the delay in an internal analog mixer, so this is not a true bypass design. Free The Tone's HTS (Holistic Tonal Solution) circuit performs impedance conversion while drawing out the sound characteristics of the guitar and bass, and the maker says it prevents sound quality deterioration when the effect is off¹. Delicious Audio noted that unlike conventional buffer circuits, the HTS circuit aims to achieve both high sound quality and low noise⁵.

What reviewers said

Guitar World's Trevor Curwen reviewed the CW-1Y and framed its appeal around control over the repeats²:

His overall verdict called it a versatile sonic asset for any pedalboard². Delicious Audio's coverage at launch positioned it among experimental delay pedals rather than straightforward echo boxes⁵.

Videos

Click to load

Questions