McCaffrey Audio Run Rabbit Run Vibe

The McCaffrey Audio Run Rabbit Run Vibe is a modulation pedal built on a classic four-stage phaser, chorus and vibrato circuit, the same family of circuitry as the vintage Uni-Vibe. McCaffrey Audio announced it in March 2016 at an MSRP of $249 USD, and it was reviewed by Pedal of the Day that November after release¹².

The design emulates the classic sounds of the vintage Uni-Vibe pedal, but it goes further: McCaffrey Audio says it produces everything from faint rotating speaker simulation to extreme octave and synth sounds that can be tuned to the note you are playing¹. Pedal of the Day found it equally at home in both worlds:

The controls

The pedal keeps its control set small: two knobs, one toggle, and three footswitches. The knobs are sized and placed so the two most-used adjustments can be made with your foot while the pedal is on the floor²¹.

The Thump toggle is worth a note for anyone who likes shallow vibe settings. McCaffrey Audio's description says it "will add low end to the output of the effect when rolling back the DEPTH knob keeping the fullness of the modulation and not sounding 'thin'"¹. Pedal of the Day agreed, calling it "a great addition" that lets you add low end response while turning down the depth².

The LED section does double duty: separate LEDs indicate whether Vibrato or Chorus is selected, and a rate LED shows the speed of the effect even when the pedal is in bypass mode, so you can see where the modulation is set before you switch it in¹.

The Crazy footswitch and the extreme sounds

The Crazy footswitch is what separates the Run Rabbit Run from a straightforward vibe clone. Doubling the speed of a four-stage modulation circuit pushes it past normal chorus and vibrato territory into ring mod, synth, and octave up or down sounds, and McCaffrey Audio says those can be tuned to the note or key you want¹. In practice that means one tap takes you from a standard vibe sweep to an effect that reacts to the pitch you play, and another tap brings you back.

The announcement lists the pedal's effect types as vibe, chorus, phaser, vibrato, ring mod, and octave¹, which reflects both the normal modes and what the Crazy switch unlocks.

The Uni-Vibe circuit behind it

The Run Rabbit Run is built on the circuit family of the Uni-Vibe, the effect Jimi Hendrix and Robin Trower used for their rotating speaker sound. The original Uni-Vibe was conceived as a pedal alternative to a Leslie speaker, the rotating cabinet designed for organs³. Strymon's history of the effect notes it is "more commonly regarded as having been created as an attempt at emulating the sound of a rotating Leslie speaker"⁴.

The circuit is not a true chorus or vibrato in the modern sense. Tru-Fi's history describes it as "a unique phase-shifting effect that simulates the sound of a rotating speaker or Leslie cabinet"⁵, which places it next to the phaser family while sounding distinct from both. That phase-shifting character is what players hear as the "swirl" of a vibe pedal, and it is why the Run Rabbit Run's four-stage circuit can cover chorus-like and vibrato-like sounds from the same box.

McCaffrey Audio pitched the pedal squarely at that vintage sound, saying it is "equally suited for squeezing out those lush, warm, vintage vibe tones (think Jimi Hendrix's 'Machine Gun') as it is at producing the more obscure, but equally pleasing modern tones"¹.

Power and connections

The pedal runs on a standard 9V power supply with a 2.1mm barrel plug and negative center polarity¹, the same arrangement as most modern pedals and standard daisy-chain supplies. It uses Neutrik jacks, which McCaffrey Audio lists as standard on all of its pedals¹. No battery option or current draw figure was given in the announcement.

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