NAMM 2021: The new Red Panda Bitmap 2 Bitcrusher will mangle your tone, in a good way
Crush your bitrate and modulate your sample rate!
Red Panda has a new updated bitcrusher pedal set for release in February. The Bitmap 2 uses fractional bit reduction and sample rate modulation to crush your guitar tones into weird distortion oblivion. If you’re looking to mangle your tone, this pedal may be for you.
Red Panda Bitmap 2
The new Red Panda Bitmap 2 is a compact, made-in-the-USA pedal with the ability to destroy your tone, but in a good musical way. It does so by fractional bit reduction and sample rate modulation, which crushes your bit rates and distorts your guitar’s signal to make them weird and wonderful. For example, if you set the bit reduction from 24-bits down to 1-bit and the sample rate reduction from 48 kHz down to 110 Hz, it will seriously degrade your pure signal.
You can run anything you like through it, not just guitars, so feel free to bitcrush your ukulele (yes please) or your favourite synthesiser or drum machine. It has stereo ins/outs via TRS cables and should handle most signals with ease.
The pedal has controls for Mix (this blends how much of the effect you have with your dry signal), Crush, Freq, Filter, Rate,and Depth, along with Drive and Env, plus Preset and Wave buttons. It is well laid out and fairly self explanatory to use. The Aux footswitch is assignable to tap tempo or preset selection.
Red Panda Bitmap 2 Bit crusher stompbox · Source: Red Panda
Modulate and Filter
Now throw in the ability to add an envelope control that can be set to modulate your sampling rate or mix, and a 4-pole low-pass filter. The latter can also be assigned to an external footswitch to control the filter sweep, which should make it even more fun to use. You also have tap tempo available, and Red Panda says there are some hidden parameters accessible through a web-based editor. That sounds pretty intriguing and I look forward to finding out more upon release.
Presets and MIDI
The Bitmap 2 has four onboard presets you can save on the actual pedal. But, if you require more, you can save up to 127 via MIDI (this is also available for MIDI clock sync). This would be ideal for players who like to build their own patches/presets to call at a later date. The pedal requires a 9V 250 mA centre-negative power supply and has an analogue buffered bypass.
The Red Panda Bitmap 2 is out on 5 February and you can pre-order via the link below.
RRP – USD 299
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