FRANKFURT, Germany – At Musikmesse 2013, HARMAN’s DigiTech is proud to announce its first in a line of iStomp Signature Artist e-pedals, joining forces with guitarist extraordinaire Adrian Belew to debut The Impossible Pedal. The e-pedal lives up to its name, giving guitarists the ability to play impossible guitar riffs that you would never think to play.
Adrian Belew needs little introduction as a beyond-cutting-edge musician who has smashed sonic boundaries with artists including David Bowie, King Crimson, Talking Heads, Frank Zappa, Nine Inch Nails and others, and over a diverse solo career spanning nearly 20 solo albums. The cries, grunts, squeals, industrial noises, twang-bar-king whammy effects and other otherworldly sounds he can coax out of his instrument make him one of the world’s most uncategorizable guitarists.
Available exclusively as an e-pedal for the iStomp, The Impossible Pedal uses two pitch shifters that can be turned on and off in sequence, and guitarists can abruptly “jump” between two intervals by stepping on the iStomp footswitch as they play. “I have been using the DigiTech HarmonyMan for years to create this unique effect,” said Belew. “With The Impossible Pedal in my iStomp I can now do things I never could before!”
Two knobs on The Impossible Pedal set the two different pitch intervals and two knobs select whether the pitches shift up or down over a two octave range. By stepping on the footswitch, the note played by the guitarist alternates between the standard (unaffected) pitch and the two pitch-shifted voices, to create melodic passages that extend beyond physical human ability. Even its iStomp icon is an impossible optical illusion that has to be seen to be disbelieved.
“Adrian Belew is a fearless innovator and his e-pedal ideas for the iStomp are a perfect match for our vision,” noted DigiTech Artist Relations Manager Tom Cram.
The DigiTech iStomp is a new concept in guitar stompboxes that allows musicians to turn the iStomp into any pedal available in the Stomp Shop online pedal store. Offering almost limitless sonic possibilities, the iStomp connects to an Apple® IOS device where musicians can use the free Stomp Shop app to load it with the e-pedal of their choice. The Stomp Shop app comes with ten of the most popular pedals and gives access to more than 40 additional e-pedals they can browse, try out and purchase. More e-pedals are added on a regular basis.
HARMAN (www.HARMAN.com) designs, manufactures and markets a wide range of audio and infotainment solutions for the automotive, consumer and professional markets — supported by 15 leading brands, including AKG®, Harman Kardon®, Infinity®, JBL®, Lexicon® and Mark Levinson®. The Company is admired by audiophiles across multiple generations and supports leading professional entertainers and the venues where they perform. More than 25 million automobiles on the road today are equipped with HARMAN audio and infotainment systems. HARMAN has a workforce of about 13,400 people across the Americas, Europe and Asia, and reported net sales of $4.4 billion for the twelve months ending June 30, 2012.
