Noise Engineering Dystorpia

Futuristic fuzz and distortion pedal for guitar and synth

Noise Engineering, known for their innovative Eurorack synthesizer modules, has made their first foray into guitar pedals with the announcement of Dystorpia, an entirely unique take on digital distortion and drive for guitar.

Noise Engineering has a reputation in the world of synthesizers for putting their own spin on classic concepts, and they’ve now brought their expertise to the guitar world. Having designed over a dozen modules that make use of distortion, Noise Engineering has taken ten years of experience creating new tones and brought it into an expansive overdrive toolkit.

“From the start, we knew we wanted to make something designed with guitarists in mind. Our testing initially focused entirely on how Dystorpia sounds with the more complex dynamics of guitars. Once we got there, we started trying it on other instruments and we were excited at how well we’d hit our mark; Dystorpia sounds great on guitars, but also basses, synths, drums, and more,” said Stephen McCaul, co-owner and Chief Noisemaker.

Dystorpia features three different distortion parameters. Gain sets the input level going into the rest of the pedal, and can overdrive for classic driven timbres. As the Blend knob is turned up, it adds in a slight saturation for some gentle distortion on its own. This makes it easier to timbrally balance the unaffected dry sound with the heavily processed wet signal. Fold controls a wavefolding algorithm, a technique taken from the world of synthesizers that creates a unique flavor of harmonic distortion. Pura adds a full-wave rectifier to the mix, another unique distortion.

Along with all of that distortion, Dystorpia features an expression-controllable Tone control with variable mid-band frequency, a switchable noise gate, and an optional suboctave generator.
Dystorpia also features two foot switches. On the right, a buffered bypass turns off and on the distortion processing. The left foot switch activates a latching or momentary freeze effect, infinitely sustaining a sound until it’s unfrozen again. While a sound is frozen, the pedal can still process new sounds at the input, allowing the performer to play over a frozen signal.

With so many tone-shaping options and performative features, Dystorpia is much more than just another fuzz or overdrive pedal. Dystorpia encompasses an entire pedalboard worth of distortion and tonal effects in a compact and fun package.

Dystorpia is available now at https://noiseengineering.us and at retailers globally.

Features

• Three unique distortion effects
• Expression-controllable Tone parameterOptional noise gate to reduce hum and add dynamics
• Add in suboctaves with the DOOM switch
• Infinitely freeze a signal with the left fooswitch
• Sounds great on guitar and synths

Dystropia is in stock now. MSRP US$399

www.noiseengineering.us