Rainger FX Break Box Distortion Pedal Rainger FX

Rainger FX Break Box Distortion Pedal

The Break Box distortion is a high gain drive pedal – with a few extra tricks up its sleeve!

Based on the Rainger FX El Distorto overdrive pedal from way back in 2009, the Break Box has the back half of a Tonebender added to it, the circuit taken directly from the Freakenbender – our Colorsound collaboration. The result is a stompbox with lots of low-end, good amounts of mids (not scooped), and some searing highs. Distortion goes from a light crunch to a high-intensity heavy distortion.

Active sustain

Hold any note and chord for a second or more, and a chorus effect fades in – audibly growing the sound. This pedal has active sustain, transforming it from in-your-face dry chunky attack into a 3D room-like churning howl! It’s like a wave coming from behind and pushing you on…..

You can adjust the chorus speed – from a slow twist to a fast psycho-wobble. Every long note-bend in a solo has extra flavour and meaning, every feeding-back chord now has movement. Because of the delay in the chorus appearing, you can play fast chords or note clusters – keeping all the accuracy and precision of modulation-free sound – with a glorious chorus bloom fading in on the longer-held bits.

However, even with all this going on the Break Box is totally quiet when it should be; a noise gate unobtrusively shuts down any hiss and hum when you’re not playing.

Vinyl scratch

But hang on – hold down the turntable pad on the pedal, and your guitar is transformed into a trigger for a record scratch sound! Like a DJ cueing up the guitar track that follows, you can keep the scratch short and choppy, or longer with the classic forward/reverse movement. The ‘pitch’ control adjusts not only the pitch of the scratch but also the speed (like when scratching vinyl for real). The sound is not a recording – it’s generated inside the pedal itself. A gentle random pitch variation keeps it sounding less ‘sampled’ and more human.

• Strum dampened strings (ie go ‘wacka wacka’) for short triggers, or play an actual note for the longer up-down scratch.
• The distortion part of the circuit is entirely analogue – tweaked over time to give the best sounds in all kinds of situations. The scratch, noise gate, chorus and chorus fade-up system are all digital.
• There’s a hi/lo trigger sensitivity switch – to help active-output instruments trigger more controllably. The On/Off footswitch is true bypass.
• The whole thing is housed in another Rainger FX custom enclosure, provocatively asymmetrical, in the tastiest pink and black.

Features:

• HUGE SOUND WIDE-FREQUENCY-RANGE DISTORTION PEDAL
• VINYL RECORD SCRATCH SOUND – GUITAR TRIGGERABLE
• SCRATCH SOUND INTERNALLY GENERATED, PITCH/SPEED CONTROLLABLE
• TONS OF VOLUME ON TAP
• HAS DELAYED CHORUS ‘ACTIVE SUSTAIN’
• INCORPORATES TONEBENDER TONE STACK