"I'm very good at the past. It's the present I can't understand." – High Fidelity, Nick Hornby (1995)
In 2000, John Cusack starred in every armchair pop music historian's favorite work of self-deprecation, High Fidelity. The film, adapted from the novel of the same name by Nick Hornby, depicts Cusack as a record store owner ardently bound by his beliefs surrounding popular music. He and his merry band of charmingly snobby music store regulars discuss and debate the foundational truths of their favorite records – as such truths are seemingly the only things in their lives of which they can make sense.
There is a comfort in cleanliness. There is a care in categorization. There is an innate human instinct to sort things out, put this here and that there, and feel clever about how correct you are identifying what goes where. Though of course, art is disruptive, like it or not. It's the truth that supersedes all other truths – that nothing's going to stay static forever, because how boring would that be – that gets you on to the real exciting stuff.
This is the Intensive Care Audio Fideleater Lo-Fi Chorus/Vibrato.
Shop the Intensive Care Fideleater Lo-Fi Chorus
Fidelity... Never Much Mattered to Me
Introducing the Intensive Care Audio Fideleater Lo-Fi Chorus/Vibrato
If you're curious about the more exciting shake-ups in the effect pedal world these days, truly look no further than the works of Intensive Care Audio. The London-based independent effect brand is relatively new on the scene with more than their fair share of exciting circuits to bring to the table. Only a handful of years in and with already a good shuffle of celebrated pedals to their name, Intensive Care Audio is definitely a name to look out for now as it may not be long before it becomes unavoidable.
One of the effects in Intensive Care's early lineup is the Fideleater. Among your other classic effects like distortion and fuzz, of which Intensive Care has a couple, the Fideleater sets out on a path that gets weird quickly. Fitting with Intensive Care Audio's design ethos, "Let's get weird," the Fideleater does not disappoint. We're not going to spoil all the fun at the jump though, let's get into what makes the Fideleater tick.
Fideleatery
Intensive Care Audio Fideleater Lo-Fi Chorus/Vibrato Design and Controls
The Fideleater is centrally a weird and warped modulator. On the tin, you read a "Lo-Fi Chorus/Vibrato," but let's talk about what that means for a second. When you hear "lo-fi" these days, when used to describe effect pedals, you're usually hearing an allusion to a tone sounding faulty, inventing imperfections, or taking on an element of unpredictability. Lo-fi pedals most commonly include cloudy modulators or imperfect pitch vibratos that emulate old or failing musical mechanisms. The Fideleater does this also, but there's more to the story. Here's some controls.
Intensive Care Audio Fidelear Lo-Fi Chorus/Vibrato Controls
- Frequency and Depth – As we said, at the center of the Fideleater is a chorus and vibrato modulation effect. What do such modulation effects need at their most basic? A modulation speed and intensity. Right here, you have the Fideleater's central engine as you increase the intensity and speed of the pedal's modulation waves.
- Wave Function – Here, we have part of the main attraction of the Fideleater. Onboard, eight LFO waveforms shape our modulator with a key distinction being that your more traditional waveform shapes are not where the switch starts*. Rather, off the bat you get weirder, less traditional shapes. More on this in a minute.
- Contract – Our first two-way switch. The Contract switch opens and closes a feedback loop within the pedal's delay structure that introduces a more prominent washy, warbling modulation texture. Flipping this switch up does quite a bit to get the Fideleater onto bubbling, effervescent sounds that really begin to blur lines between effects.
- Untie – Our second two-way switch. Untie extends the length of the delay structure of the pedal. When switched up, the delay is elongated for a more drastic trailing effect that breaks the Fideleater out to a more delay-flavored sound that colors outside the lines of your traditional modulator pedal. It's probably best to think of this switch as the, "To delay or not to delay, that is the question," switch.
- Dry/Wet – Finally, the Fideleater features a control that is more than welcome when it comes to its more seasick, noisy tendencies. A central effect wet mix control introduces the Fideleater effect gradually to create a more legible balance of effect and no-effect. If you're nervous about the Fideleater swallowing your whole signal, don't get too worried.
Or that may be a metric versus imperial thing...
With these fairly simple control scheme at the helm, we're off to wilder, weirder pastures.
Final Fidelity Tactics
Intensive Care Audio Fideleater Lo-Fi Chorus/Vibrato Tones
It would be an understatement to simply say that the Intensive Care Audio Fideleater is a "weird modulator." It's an understatement, so we'll say that, but we won't just leave it there. The Fideleater is solidly a lo-fi modulator that you need to hear even if you think you've heard 'em all. Between the blissfully simple dance between your Frequency speed and Depth intensity dials, the off-the-wall LFO shapes, and the two-way switches that quickly swap you into altogether new effect lanes, the Fideleater has a lot to show for and a quite intuitive interface to make it all happen. Let's talk about just a few of the outlandish places the Fideleater can bring you.
Intensive Care Audio Fideleater Modulation Effect Tones
S.S. SlackerismStarting off slow, we get into the Fideleater's more basic utility as a powerful chorus and doubletracking effect. Picking a more traditional sine wave LFO and rolling back on Frequency speed and Depth intensity lands the Fideleater in a familiar place of a cloudy, swirling, lo-fi chorus. If you're a fan of hazy, indie-flavored choruses, the Fideleater can easily be all that and more.
Uncoiling the KnotPart of what the Fideleater does by putting its more nontraditional waveform shapes on the leftmost end of its LFO dial is encourage you to play more experimentally off the bat. Toward its counterclockwise side, you get options for things like Random Slopes and Random Steps. This is probably where you'll feel most inclined to start pushing the modulation as your notes bend and swirl in unpredictable movements or blinks – whether you pick slopes or steps. Wind up the pedal's more pitch vibrato tendencies and let it fall down the stairs like a Slinky with a playful mind of its own.
Matrix StrobeAs we look toward the Untie switch, the Fideleater unlocks a different lane of lo-fi delay that is absolutely worth the trip. Bump up the Fideleater's trailing tendencies and you get more sci-fi blinks as the pedal creates off-the-wall delay trails that perform almost as a tremolo, if you pick Random Steps or Steps waveforms. Create charming blips in your signal as the Fideleater introduces its capacity for being a peculiar delay effect, playing like an otherworldly tape reel.
404 CocktailOnce we're off to the races with the Fideleater's effects spilling over into more noisemaker territories, the Fideleater only gets weirder with the Contract switch that exaggerates some of the pedal's experimental, charmingly "acquired taste" tones. If your other lo-fi modulation pedals play with more cloudy, hazy textures to create their lo-fi palette, the Fideleater bends from tradition by replacing that haziness with glitchiness as it introduces distinct bit-crushed distortion.
Torrenting WaterfallsOur last stop here is the Fideleater at its most unconfined. Push everything on this pedal to the max and you get the Fideleater as a truly raucous noisemaker that mixes its warbling modulation sweeps with its glitchy pile-ups. The resulting sounds conjure up images of a dot matrix in a dentist's chair or a conch shell singing the song of a blue-screen sea – a balance of bubbling, organic, modulated wash and the unfeeling deluge of glitchy ones and zeroes.
Intensive Care Audio Fideleater Lo-Fi Chorus/Vibrato Final Thoughts
What have we learned today?
Well, for one, we've learned that the relatively newfangled realm of "lo-fi" effects has quite a bit more horizon to expand into. The Fideleater does quite a lot to introduce a modulating experience that is authentically lo-fi while coming up with all-new, incredibly easy ways to break from convention and inspire fresh sounds.
Doing everything that it does all in one device is nothing to sneeze at, either. If you're looking for a cloudy, double-tracking modulator, a tightly-twisted vibrato machine with a mind of its own, a bona fide glitchy noisemaker, or some combination of all-of-the-above plus more, the Fideleater does it all and does it with finesse. The pedal's compact, streamlined, intuitive, and highly playable interface has it punch well above its weight class as it simultaneously makes a case for being your next standalone modulation or noise machine.
In short, the Fideleater leaves no crumbs.
