Matthews Effects The Conductor

Matthews Effects The Conductor 

The Conductor is an optical circuit.

The Matthews Effects Conductor is a fixed wave type tremolo pedal. This means that it gives you access to a set of specific wave shapes in which you are not able to modify. At least on the surface it would seem that way. 

First off, lets clear up any confusion as to which wave shapes the pedal offers, and in which order they are offered. You'll note there are no labels on the "Wave" knob to indicate this.

So moving the knob from left to right, gives us these basic wave shapes, in that order. Now you may be looking at the above picture and saying to yourself... That is an odd looking sine, reverse sawtooth, sawtooth, and triangle wave. You'd be right.

The reason for this is because the "Depth" knob on this pedal, does a lot more than what you expect a depth knob to do. Typically a depth knob will allow you to dial the lowest volume point, and of course we all know the lowest point you can go is no volume. Silent.

Well, on this pedal that point is about at 1 or 2 o'clock on the depth knob for most all wave shapes.

So what happens when we turn the knob past this point? Well... Let's illustrate that with some various depth settings and see what happens.

 Sine Wave At Various Depths

 Triangle Wave At Various Depths

Reverse Sawtooth Wave At Various Depths

Sawtooth Wave At Various Depths

Square Wave at Various Depths

 
So past about 1 or 2 o'clock on most wave shapes starts modifying the ratio of on/off time, commonly known as the duty cycle. This pedal allows us to squish the wave forms a bit, and in some instances give us a slightly modified wave form from the original intended shape.

This basically equates to you having a little more flexibility in wave shape editing with these select able wave forms.

We can see that the sine wave is smoothest, with the most equal on/off time at around 65%, Triangle, is most tri...anglist at around 65%, so on and so forth.

So now that we know a little more about the wave shapes offered and how the depth control works in conjunction with them. Lets move onto the other controls.

The "Division" knob allows you to select at which rate the tremolo goes depending on what you tap. You can set 5 different divisions.

Divisions: 1/4, 1/2, x1, x2, x4 (Turning Left-Right)

The pedal has a separate tap button from the Bypass switch, which is raised quite a bit to prevent you from accidentally hitting the bypass switch. It is also a soft switch, so much easier to press down than the bypass switch.

The "Output" knob allows you to take the entire signal down to 0 volume, or you can boost it.

The secret weapon of this, and most Tremolo pedals is the tone knob. This particular one is a low pass filter that can allow you to tame the highs in your signal if you want. As UN-interesting as that sounds, you'd be amazed at how useful that actually is. IMO, tone options for Tremolo are what take decent tremolos to being exceptional.

The speed range is great, it can go longer than you'd ever need it and probably quicker than you'd ever need it to go as well.

Slowest Speed: 17157 ms/cycle
Fastest Speed: 21 ms/cycle

Pro's
 - 5 Useful Wave Shapes, including the major ones (Triangle, Sine, Square)
 - Ability to have some affect over the duty cycle
 - Tone control options
 - Good implementation of tap tempo switch
 - Output Volume control (Boost or cut)
 - Good range on all controls

Con's
 - Poor (no) labeling of Wave/Div knobs (Could be a pain adjusting live)
 - Your only option to control speed is tap tempo in conjunction with the div knob. You CANNOT simply turn a knob to adjust the speed.

Note that the Ramp Up/Ramp Down waves are mis-labled in the video as I was initially going off the Rogue Guitar shop description that labels them in the wrong order.