Marrying the sustain technology of the Freeze pedal with the fluid glissandos of the Superego, the Pico Deep Freeze from Electro-Harmonix is a versatile sustain pedal that offers unprecedented tone manipulation in a compact Pico chassis. Sporting three distinct modes—Latch, Moment, and Auto—the Pico Deep Freeze punches well above its weight with sounds that are impossible on a normal guitar.
The controls are surprisingly comprehensive, including separate Dry and Effect (Wet) knobs, Speed for multifunctional attack and decay adjustment, Layer for setting the volume attenuation of the previous layer, and Gliss for controlling the morph time between sounds. Tap tempo is provided with three subdivisions. And finally, you can switch between three different types of bypass modes: a traditional analog buffered bypass, a default digital bypass, and a hybrid analog/digital bypass mode. The Pico Deep Freeze includes a 9V power adapter.
Each time you press down on the footswitch, the sound present at the Input jack is frozen. The Speed/Layer knob allows you to layer frozen sounds. The setting of the knob—at the moment you press the footswitch—sets the volume level of previous layers. Turn down Speed/Layer to minimum to disable layering; set to max to allow frozen layers to remain at full volume.
The Speed knob sets the fade-out time of the auto freeze. When Speed is set to maximum, the sustained notes do not fade out. While Auto is engaged, press and hold the footswitch to stop accepting new notes and sustain the freeze indefinitely, allowing you to play over the frozen sound.
In Auto mode, by default, this knob controls the fade-out time of the frozen sounds after you play a new note/chord. This can be changed to affect the attack instead of the decay of the signal.
As you turn the Gliss knob clockwise, the gliss time increases. To turn gliss off completely, turn the Gliss knob down all the way to its full counterclockwise position.
At maximum, the frozen signal does not decay, it continues indefinitely. Optionally, you can change the Speed knob to control attack time instead of decay. In this case, the higher the Speed knob setting, the slower the attack time.
- Digital bypass: the default bypass type, this mode allows for the smoothest transitions when entering and exiting bypass
- Analog bypass: the bypass signal is analog and buffered, giving you the purest, least-colored sound in bypass mode
- Hybrid bypass: when you switch from effect to bypass, your bypass signal is initially digital, but the pedal will seamlessly switch to analog bypass when there's a brief gap in your playing, offering both a smooth bypass transition as well as the uncolored qualities of an analog buffer