Rowin Slow Hand

The Rowin Slow Hand is an auto swell, or envelope shaper, pedal from Rowin¹². Instead of adding a new sound on top of your playing, it reshapes the envelope of each note: it cuts off the attack and fades the volume up, so every picked note arrives like a violin bow stroke rather than a pluck¹. The effect is often compared to what a player gets by rolling the guitar's volume knob up after each note, the technique Jeff Beck is known for, and with delay in the chain it can produce backwards sounding passages²¹.

What it does

The Slow Hand sits in the filter family of volume and envelope shaping effects, but it is closer in spirit to working a volume pedal by hand than to a filter sweep. It detects each note you play and fades it in automatically, producing an effect like rolling up the volume knob on the guitar or that of a bowed instrument¹. Because the attack of the note is removed, single lines take on a smooth, horn or string-like quality instead of a percussive pluck.

Where that becomes interesting is in combination with other effects. The demo notes that used with delay it can create backwards sounding passages¹, and Chuck of Chuck's Guitar Geekery points to the same territory, comparing it to the sound of flipping a tape over and playing it in reverse, something Jimi Hendrix was known for, and noting that adding delay pushes it toward a reverse delay effect². He also found the pedal shines with a lot of reverb, in ambient type tones².

Controls and how to set them

The pedal has two controls, and both matter for getting it to track your guitar properly¹.

The demo reviewer found the threshold control needs matching to the instrument: with it set high, the guitar was not triggering the effect as it should, and turning it back down to about half fixed the tracking¹. The threshold is adjusted depending on the output of your guitar¹. The reviewer also found the effect works especially well into a breaking-up amp, and noted that ramping up gain before the Slow Hand, with a distortion or overdrive pedal, changes how it behaves¹.

How it plays

Both demo reviewers agree on one thing: this is not a plug-and-play pedal. Chuck describes it as a pedal you have to learn to play with, one where the pedal itself is almost like an instrument you figure out how to interact with².

His demo setup gives a picture of where the pedal sits in a chain: an Agile Les Paul style guitar into an Orange Terror Stamp amp, with a Tone City Tiny Spring reverb and occasional delay from a Re-echo pedal, and heavy reverb because ambient tones are where he felt it really shines².

Review video

Chuck's Guitar Geekery demoed the Slow Hand in April 2021, running it with heavy reverb and occasional delay and exploring the swell, reverse-tape and volume-knob sounds it produces, while noting it takes time to learn to play with².

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A demo video walks through the threshold and swell controls and shows how the threshold needs adjusting to suit the guitar's output¹.

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Videos

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Questions