Hologram Electronics Microcosm

The Hologram Electronics Microcosm is a granular effects pedal: a stompbox that takes your sound apart and rebuilds it using sampling, pitch-shifting, delay and looping techniques. Hologram describes it as a pedal that "rearranges and reinterprets your sound in new and exciting ways," with cascading micro-loops that can be locked into tight, tap-tempo synced rhythms, diffused into ambient textures or woven into drones¹. It was slated for release in April 2020².

It is not a conventional looper in the Ditto or Boss RC mold. The looper is one part of a larger granular engine: 11 granular and looping effects with 44 preset variations, a stereo reverb section, a resonant lowpass filter, pitch modulation, and a Hold function that freezes effects and patterns¹³. Delicious Audio characterized it as "a multi-mode granular looper/delay/phrase looper with added filter and reverb"⁴.

What it does: granular effects, looping and delay in one pedal

Granular processing works by capturing tiny fragments of your signal, "grains," and replaying, layering and rearranging them. On the Microcosm that shows up as four banks of effects, each effect with four preset variations⁸:

You can alternate between forward and reverse effect playback in real time with the press of a button, and an expansive stereo reverb section offers four reverb styles, "ranging from room reverb to massive ambient wash"⁸. Sixteen user preset slots save effects, settings, configurations and recorded loops for recall later¹⁸.

The rear panel has a single mono/stereo TRS 1/4-inch input, left/mono and right 1/4-inch outputs, and a standard 9V DC center negative power input for the provided adapter⁹. Input modes are switchable between Instrument and Line Level, so it takes guitar level or line-level sources from a mixer or synth⁸.

The phrase looper

The looper is a 60-second stereo phrase looper². Its feature set, from the maker⁸:

• Infinite overdubbing
• Reverse loop playback
• Fade loops in and out
• Undo and erase

The looper can be routed before or after the effects, so you can capture rapid-fire loops with one tap of a footswitch, record layers of time-synced effects, or use the looper completely independently of the effects bank⁸. That routing choice matters: looper-before-effects means your granular textures keep evolving over a frozen loop, while looper-after captures the processed output as recorded.

Three footswitches control tap tempo, bypass and hold/sampler in regular effects mode, and switch to record/play/dub, activate the looper and stop/erase when the looper is engaged⁹.

Control, MIDI and sync

The internal clock can be controlled three ways: the onboard tap tempo, MIDI, or the manual tempo control⁸. MIDI In/Out/Thru carries clock synchronization¹, and a published MIDI chart maps the looper and tempo functions to control change messages¹³⁴:

Program change messages 33 to 36 select the STRUM effect presets A through D¹⁰. An expression input is mappable to many controls¹.

Bypass is selectable between true bypass switching and buffered bypass with trails¹. The buffered option lets granular washes and reverb tails continue after you disengage rather than cutting them off.

Global configuration is reached by holding the Shift button and the Phrase Looper button simultaneously; amber lights animate to confirm you are in that mode. Tapping the Reverse button three times rapidly runs the firmware version test¹¹.

Where it came from

The Microcosm is a stompbox, revealed as Hologram Electronics' latest effects unit⁵, and was slated for release in April 2020⁵⁹⁶. At the time of one review it was Hologram's latest offering⁹. A 2026 review lists the price as $459⁷, and the maker's own store lists it at £469.00 GBP, marked down to £460.00 GBP, with the product sold out across its UK, EU, US and AU variants as of October 2026¹. The price of £460 is also given at hologramelectronics.com¹².

What reviewers said

Pedal of the Day reviewed it in May 2020, running through the granular effects, looper and MIDI features with a stereo demo, and concluded³:

Guitar World's Chris Gill reviewed it as Hologram's latest offering, detailing the footswitch layout, rear panel and power requirements⁹.

Microcosm and the Warp

In MusicRadar's review of the Soma Laboratory Warp, a desktop granular instrument, the reviewer positioned the Microcosm as its closest rival¹²:

The practical differences for a player: the Microcosm is a floor-going stompbox with tap tempo, MIDI clock sync and 16 user preset slots, where the Warp is a desktop unit without those features. The Microcosm's $459 price⁷¹ also undercuts where the Warp sits in the market, though the Microcosm's current sold-out status on the maker's store¹ means finding one is its own challenge.

Videos

Click to load

Click to load

Click to load

Questions