I noticed this pedal being discussed in the FHF thread this morning. Below is a brochure I picked up at SE's NAMM booth back in January 1985. It was printed in 1981 and explains the pedal in detail. I don't know how I've managed to keep it for 31 years, but here it is.

Patch of Shades is mentioned in the book Analog Man's Guide to Vintage Effects by Tom Hughes. Page 118 says: "There were two production runs, one in '81 and the other in '89, and only about 100 units total were ever produced, making this one of the world's most rare effects."

I brought this up in a thread a while ago.....the graphic looks very Dan Chapman to me.....
Dan, did you do the artwork?

I guess I can understand the high price folks are asking for this pedal due to its limited production. I really dig the sound of it, and would prolly leave it turned on all the time....ehehe.

Great post John!
Thx

cheers,
k

.....Just read the fine print.....looks like Dan did the logo design....

cool.

cheers,
k

What would it take to achieve a consensus on re-introducing this pedal to the world? And not just for stick players. I don't see anything else like it out there on the market.

R

I've been around Emmett and that pedal a hundred times and he's tried to explain it to me at least ten times....I thought I grasped how it worked but after reading this stuff I find I almost did but not fully. I do now tho. You could just about rig a 2 way volume/tone pedal to do something like that but what makes this thing cooler is the subtlety of just putting more or less pressure on the pad to fade in the effect. Too bad they're so rare.

I second that!! Surely Boss, or some pedal maker could viably reproduce this pedal for sure!

i think the Morley pedal that Per Boysen uses/used to use might work...sorta. comments, Per?

The Keith McMillan Softstep boards are directionally pressure sensitive if you're into the live DAW thing.

An interesting discussion. I wonder if Emmett could share his thoughts on another production of this pedal, or on the reverse-engineering of the pedal by someone who would like to see the effect reintroduced to the market.

K

Thank you john.e for sharing the brochure! It was interesting reading but did not answer my question what this effect actually is? It sounds interesting in Emmett's recodings. As far as I understand there are three wha filters - for bass, mid-range and upper frequencies - but I found no information on whether these three dynamic filters are addressed through a frequency splitter or if the full signal is fed each of them. I also could not make out what movement is working the filters - is it the audio signal amplitude with some applied envelope or is it foot moves of the players? I did understand though that the foot pad allows the player to fade in the master of the full effect processing but regarding those "R sound" filter speed flickering I have no idea what's supposed to trigger that.

Myself I hardly use any pedals at all and prefer open sound-processing systems like a computer, a mixer + rack or all-in-the-box solutions like the stuff by Eventide, tcElectronics and Fractal Audio with some control surface that talks CV or MIDI.