Home › Forums › Review Your EHX Gear › Pitch Fork review

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  • October 18, 2014 at 9:06 pm #83679
    lepmuk
    Member

    the pitch fork is very useful. It can do a lot of things.

    A tiny pedal that does polyphonic harmony, pitch shift doubling, glissando/portamento moves with no exp pedal, baritone guitar sounds… it’s incredibly useful. Thanks EHX for another winner.

    One thing it can not do, which really bothers me, is minor 3rd harmonies.

    EHX chose to leave out a few harmonies, and that one in particular really is one I would use a lot. I could do without +-3 octaves… even +2 octaves. Major thirds? Minor 3rds are way hipper if you ask me… so there you have it.

    I wish there was a way you could choose your favorite intervals and save them to the presets. Maybe there is…

    I give it 9 out of 10 stars

    October 20, 2014 at 12:23 pm #120309
    rcf56
    Member

    A minor 3rd should be possible with a pot connected to the expression jack; just choose a M3rd and roll the pot back a bit?

    Better still might be a box of bits with a trim pot and a switch for easy/fixed setting of the minor 3rd?

    October 20, 2014 at 2:08 pm #120310
    lepmuk
    Member

    ya, that should work… just another thing on the pedalboard when you’re trying to keep it small…. ; (

    October 20, 2014 at 2:19 pm #120311
    rcf56
    Member

    That’s true ;)

    I’m just happy to get all that versatility in one little pedal; and battery power too. Actually, I would also sacrifice the 3 octaves up/down for a minor 3rd setting, but the lack of it isn’t really a problem for me.

    October 20, 2014 at 2:30 pm #120312
    tntptp
    Member

    I just recieved the Pitchfork and so far I’m very happy with it. I did a little experimenting with it before and after my dirt pedal and noticed it sounds more natural before dirt. I think typical signal chain is dirt first then pitch effects, but it sounds more natural before. I wondered if anyone else had any comments or experiences you could share about this topic?

    I also have the B9, which I love. I have it after all dirt and it works good in this location.

    November 7, 2014 at 7:28 pm #120366
    toddwp
    Member

    I’m trying to compile a list of settings comparisons between Pitchfork and the Boss PS-6 Harmonist. Its over on TGP at http://www.thegearpage.net/board/showthread.php?p=18887468. If you spot errors or omissions let me know and I’ll update the post as necessary. (I havent cross-posted it, to minimize cross-feed of bad data if there are any errors in there).

    February 9, 2015 at 12:12 pm #120512
    srmiller55
    Member

    I am still a little confused. Does the Pitch Fork create “intelligent” harmonies or is it merely pitch shifting every note by the same interval that is selected?

    February 9, 2015 at 2:57 pm #120514
    rcf56
    Member
    Quote:
    …or is it merely pitch shifting every note by the same interval that is selected?

    Yes :-)

    February 9, 2015 at 3:02 pm #120515
    rcf56
    Member
    Quote:
    I’m trying to compile a list of settings comparisons between Pitchfork and the Boss PS-6 Harmonist.

    The Pitchfork is a clean polyphonic pitch shifter and the PS-6 is an intelligent diatonic harmoniser. Two very different pedals with some overlap; detune works nicely on both, and the whammy settings also.

    The PS-6 is good for that twin/triple lead guitar sound which works best on single note guitar lines. The PS-6 was advertised as working with chords, but even the octave shifts sound a bit warbly on chords. Try harmonising a full chord melody with the PS-6 and you get mush.

    You could use the Pitchfork as a harmoniser but it would only really work with fifths. Though it does work reasonably well with 5ths, the 7th degree of a major scale would not be harmonised in a diatonically correct way; it would be raised by a semi-tone. The Pitchfork can shift chords very cleanly, and mixed with some dry guitar signal you can achieve some very rich and beautiful sounds, as demonstrated in the EHX demo video at 5:30.

    The Pitchfork is also extremely good at down-tuning which obviously needs a full wet setting; guitar to baritone tuning works particularly well and full chords sound very rich and clean. Down-tuning (full wet) a 4th is my favourite setting but all the shift settings are good and useful. The PS-6 is not really designed for this role. If you want to harmonise a mostly single note guitar line to get that twin/ triple lead guitar sound, then the PS-6 would be the way to go. If you want to cleanly shift chords or down-tune your instrument then the Pitchfork is the only choice. I do wish the Pitchfork had separate gliss rates for bend up and bend down so that I could instantly or very quickly drop the pitch (full wet) down to the chosen interval by pressing the footswitch, then have it slowly (at a different gliss rate) rise back up to pitch when I released the footswitch.

    February 9, 2015 at 11:45 pm #120519
    srmiller55
    Member

    Thanks to all who enlightened me. I believe I now better understand how it works However I wish that on pitch shifters manufacturers would only use the number of steps or ½ steps from the standard the pitch is shifted (like the DigiTech DropTune). Using designations such as m2, M3, P4, etc. suggests to me that you are keeping the shifting within the appropriate scale (i.e. intelligent harmonizing), which it is clearly not.

    I do hope that EH comes out with their own harmonizer someday soon. It would be a nice addition to the Pitch Fork. I’ve watched the demos on the Boss PS-6 and Behringer US-600 and I am not very impressed with their sound quality. The Pitch Fork sounds way better. I have a TC Helicon vocal harmonizer that appears to work pretty well on voices. I’d like to have a similar product for my guitar; perhaps to do a Dickey and Duane harmonizing solo or something. But maybe the Electro Harmonix product development team already has one in the worx. It could happen.

    March 19, 2015 at 1:24 am #120596
    Nydvar
    Member

    I have been hugely disappointed by the Pitchfork. I play in punk/black metal band with no bass player and wanted an octave effect to fill out the low end. We play in drop A. I used a 6505/mesa cab for the guitar channel into an AB pedal and wanted to use my bass big muff and the pitchfork for the bass channel into a ampeg head/cab.

    The main reason I got the Pitchfork was for the one octave down setting and thought on other reviews it tracked well with distortion after it.

    This is not the case. The tracking on the lower strings in one octave down setting is aweful and clunky even with blending in more of the guitar signal it sounds worse than the Behringer octave pedal I borrowed from a friend. It sounds muddy and the chords are unclear. I had hoped it would track better than it does.

    The other big issue is the noise when you use it in a daisy chain. It is so loud it really is a problem as most people would like to run their pedals with a daisy chain.

    The EHX nano bass big muff rules !!!

    February 25, 2016 at 5:27 pm #121307
    jayrope
    Member

    I like the pitchfork a lot, but obviously it isn’t good for anything. It’s kinda slow/laggiash and washes out attacks out in general. But the whole range of +/- 3 octaves makes it super suitable for weird stuff. Insect choirs and all.

    Pitched down 1 oct. my 1967 Jolana Star VII sounds like an uprite bass with flatwound strings. Very cool sound.

    At last i made an expression knob out of an alpha 5K log pot, some microphone cable and a TRS jack, so i can change pitch on the table without having to bend down. Awesome.
    2K linear might be better, though, 5k log only work after roughly the half of a turn. Someone will try it out ;)

    Wiring
    Tip to wiper
    The other two to the sides. Swap them to reverse knob direction.
    See attached image as well.

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