TC Electronic INFINITE MINI

The TC Electronic INFINITE MINI is a super-compact sample sustainer pedal: it captures the tail end of a long note or chord and loops it so the sound sustains indefinitely, letting you create, capture and sustain a moment and then play on top of it¹. TC Electronic describes the result as an organic, pleasing tone, because rather than simply repeating a frozen sample the pedal loops your sound back and forth randomly and simultaneously¹.

The pedal was announced in May 2023 as the Infinite Mini Sample Sustainer, a downsized version of the existing TC Electronic INFINITE SAMPLE SUSTAINER, and was available to preorder at $119². It sits at the intersection of looper, reverb and delay territory, and its sustain process is digital, but Analog-Dry-Thru keeps your original guitar tone analog and unaffected by the conversion stages when you play over the sustained layers¹.

A sample sustainer in a mini enclosure

A sample sustainer works differently from a reverb or delay pedal: instead of adding an effect on top of your playing, it grabs the decaying tail of a note or chord and loops it, so a single sustained note can become a pad or drone you keep playing over. TC Electronic says the two-way looping is what gives the INFINITE MINI its character: the sampled layers are played back and forth randomly, which the company says produces a more organic sound than a straight one-way loop¹.

Guitar World's Michael Astley-Brown described the same behavior at the pedal's announcement:

The mini format is the point of the pedal. Gearnews reported that the smaller version offers guitarists all the same sustain functions as the full-sized pedal, in a more board-friendly enclosure and at a lower price⁴.

The controls

The INFINITE MINI keeps the three knobs found on the original pedal⁵:

The footswitch uses TC Electronic's MASH technology and can be set to latching or momentary⁵. In momentary operation the sampled section is active only while your foot is on the switch; in latching operation a single press adds more sample layers, and a double-tap stops the sample and clears the memory⁶. These behaviors are documented on the full-size Infinite Sample Sustainer, whose switching scheme the Mini shares⁶.

What the mini version loses is the FX Type rotary knob of the original pedal². Instead, the looping modes and other settings live in the TonePrint app.

TonePrint

TonePrint is TC Electronic's preset and editing system. On the INFINITE MINI, the three knobs can be remapped to different functions via TonePrint mapping, so you can tweak them to your preference¹. Delicious Audio's Paolo De Gregorio noted that the pedal "delegates pretty much anything else, including reverb on/off and FX Types (looping modes) to the TonePrint app"⁵. The full-size pedal also offers three TonePrint slots to design and choose from⁷.

From the Infinite Sample Sustainer

The INFINITE MINI is a reduced version of the Infinite Sample Sustainer, which TC Electronic introduced in January 2022 as its first sustainer pedal ever⁸. The original was designed in TC Electronic's headquarters in Denmark⁸, and Delicious Audio assessed it as at least an evolution, rather than a copy, of an idea pioneered by Gamechanger Audio⁹.

The original pedal's Infinity mode can be enabled for endless sustain⁸, and on the Mini, Infinite mode adds and sustains an indefinite number of layers which gradually morph together⁵.

How the Mini differs from the original

In short: the Mini keeps the core sustain engine and the three core knobs, moves the looping-mode selection into the app, and drops the price by around $40 in exchange for the smaller enclosure⁴.

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