Having full control over your equipment is essential, both for creative work and for good stage performance. Is there any guitarist who hasn’t felt like they weren’t able to fully utilize the capabilities of their effects? Expression pedal here, tap tempo there, delay on, chorus off and you only have two feet of which you need at least one to stand on. We need more control! We need automation! And MIDI is our tool!
Oscillator Devices was founded in March of 2021 in Oberderdingen, Germany, be me, Uwe Halmich, engineer and embedded software developer. I am fascinated by the possiblities of MIDI. A simple protocol, still in use in its first version from 1982. Over the decades, the market for equipment for guitar and bass players learned to embrace it. But we’re still not there. The goal is, to automate your rig, so you can focus on creating music.
This boils down to one essential thing. With the press of a single button, all of my equipment should be set to create the tone that I wish and everything that should be in sync, will be in sync. To achieve that, I give you two types of tools.
First, devices that bring MIDI control to equipment that isn’t designed for it. Thats the Imp (accompanied by its big brother, the Goblin), named after the creatures in iconographers from Terry Pratchett’s novels. It’s the little creature who sits in the effects device and switches it on or off for us, changes the channel, or hits the tap tempo. In reality it is a small MIDI-controlled electronics, just the size of a 9V block, that can handle almost any circumstance. Also, there is the Garbage Collector. It controls effects to which external switches can be connected, e.g. delays with an external tap tempo switch, or channel switching of amps. It also can be a MIDI controlled expression pedal, to control effects with expression inputs.
Second, there are devices that bring whole new functions to your rig. Like the Hydra, a line of reorderable MIDI loop switchers with some unique features, or the Siren, a stereo MIDI volume controller with advanced Tremolo functions. There is also the Minerva, a revolutionary sample player in a tiny package with full MIDI control. The formerly called Garbage Collector EXP became the Trash Panda and kickstarted a new product series of MIDI controllable expression pedal splitters. In 2025 a Utility series started with the release of the ABY, a simple, but effective MIDI controlled stereo ABY switch.
2025 will further bring the redesign of the Siren, a stereo version of the HYDRA4X and a secret utility pedal, that you never know you needed.