RPS Effects Arcade Machine

The RPS Effects Arcade Machine is a PLL-based analog synth and harmonizer pedal that takes your instrument's signal, latches onto its frequency, and re-synthesizes it as a square wave¹. Rather than layering a shifted copy on top of your dry tone the way most harmonizers do, it replaces your sound with synthesized voices: one and two octaves down, one and two octaves up, plus an interval of your choosing, effectively a 6-voice synthesizer you control with your instrument²¹. RPS Effects unveiled it in April 2020 with a street price of $265, sold directly from the maker's online store².

What a PLL pedal does

A phase-locked loop, or PLL, is a circuit that locks onto the frequency of an incoming signal and generates a new waveform matched to it. In the Arcade Machine, that means your guitar's pitch is tracked and re-synthesized as a square wave, which on its own produces a rich, rounded synth tone¹. The design descends from the Schumann Electronics PLL, and Premier Guitar describes the Arcade Machine as the latest of many available PLL homages, though one that remains on the large side compared to simplified tributes³.

Because the circuit tracks one frequency at a time, the pedal is monophonic: it plays best with one note at a time⁴. Delicious Audio notes it is the only analog harmonizer out there that can give all the intervals in a 12-tone scale¹. Compared with digital synth pedals like the Boss SY-300 Guitar Synth or the Meris Enzo, which model full synth voices digitally, the Arcade Machine's appeal is its raw, analog square-wave character. It sits in the same experimental territory as pedals like the Pigtronix Mothership2 and Way Huge Atreides Analog Weirding Module, among the many synth pedals on the market.

The controls

The front panel breaks into interval voices, a vibrato section, and utility controls. Up to four octave channels of harmony, two up and two down, are offered, plus a user-chosen interval⁵.

The vibrato section spans subtle pitch variation up to full-on glitched-out computer sounds, and it acts on every voice at once rather than on the dry signal⁶¹. Delicious Audio sums up the sonic territory as fat bass, sawing mids, and laser beam trebles¹.

Expression and CV control

The Arcade Machine has an expression pedal input that takes over the interval selection, so you can sweep the harmony interval with your foot while playing¹. The same input accepts control voltage (CV)⁵¹, which opens the door to driving it from modular synth gear or other CV sources, in the same spirit as pedals like the Sonicsmith ConVertor and Red Witch Synthotron CV.

Build, power and bypass

The pedal comes in a die-cast aluminum case with a soft-click true bypass on/off switch, so your dry signal passes through untouched when the effect is off². Power is 9-volt operation with a standard DC input²⁶, the same arrangement as most compact pedals, so it fits a typical pedalboard supply.

What reviewers said

Pedal of the Day reviewed it in August 2020 and called it:

Pedal of the Day⁴

Premier Guitar reviewed it in September 2023, recording with a Squier Classic Vibe '70s Jaguar fitted with Curtis Novak Jag-V pickups feeding the pedal³. The reviewer's verdict on its character was blunt about what the pedal really is:

Premier Guitar³

The same review found the pedal mangles your sound in ways sonic anarchists will deem patently glorious³, which is a fair summary of where it fits: not a transparent pitch tool, but a machine for players who want their guitar turned into something else entirely.

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