Openstomp – The Open Source Guitar Pedal

When I was in a band, I played with a guitar processor called the Zoom 505. Apart from being insanely cheap, this processor had two very awesome effects called A1 and C3 that saw us through most songs. I did try fiddling with the settings to program my own effects but it ‘farted’ too much on the lows. Plus, one never really read the manual to see how these things were done anyway.

Here to help with limited floorspace and unlimited effects ideas is the OpenStomp Coyote-1. According to the website

The OpenStomp^TM Coyote-1 is an open source audio effects processor built for guitar players. With the Coyote-1 users can develop custom audio effects in software (like distortion, echo, chorus etc.), mix multiple effects to build “patches”, and exchange those effects and patches with the OpenStomp^TM community.

A companion Windows application (OpenStomp^TM Workbench) allows Users to combine effects into patches graphically, and to move patches and effects between the Coyote-1 device and their PC’s disk.

The Coyote-1 O/S is open source so users can tweak it to behave any way they like, and the hardware is fully documented so that developers can take control of the whole pedal, dedicating all available system resources toward the implementation of unique custom solutions.

This is way cool and proves that guitar players can be geeky too. So suck it Slash.

Engadget puts the price tag at $350.