Catalinbread Bitters

The Bitters is a reimagining of a hyper-deranged multifx processor, the Alesis Bitrman. Featuring knobs for Distortion, Phaser and one of four choosable sound manglers, you can dial in everything from a lush chorus to a crushing barrage of noise. A handy Mix control reins in the mayhem, making for a unique soundscaping tool perfect for the pedalboard or mixing desk. In 2004, the Alesis company released a series of effects geared towards tabletop musicians and DJs. This series was called “ModFX” and featured seven relatively pedestrian effect types, including vocoder, tremolo, compression, phaser, flanger, and filter. The seventh one, however, was a beast all its own among its ModFX peers and pedals in general. It is called the Bitrman. Our Bitters distills the madness of this circuit, fixing up the original’s shortcomings and trimming the fat to deliver an infinitely more usable version.Occupying the darkest corner of the soundscaping realm, the Bitters will give you lush, usable effects or completely render your signal into a puddle of digital mess. Just like the original, the Bitters pairs just as well with synths, drum machines, and DAWs as it does with electric guitar and bass. And since the original didn’t have a mix control of any kind, the Bitters is infinitely more usable than the original ever was.The Bitters is essentially a multi-effects device on steroids, giving you individual knobs for distortion and phaser, along with a third user-selectable program called “Bitters.” This program can be one of four different effects: Decimator, Bitcrusher, Frequency Modulation, and Ring Modulation. These three effects are run in series, but you can reverse the order such that Bitters comes first for some complete sonic mayhem.