Z.Vex Effects Instant Lo-Fi Junky Vexter chorus pedal

The Instant Lo-Fi Junky does exactly what it says on the tin. If you're familiar with artists like Boards of Canada then you'll have some idea of what to expect - a friend of mine has dubbed this the 'Bibio Box' because it's so good at creating those warped tones characteristic of Stephen Wilkinson's music! I've tried running a whole load of stuff through it, including guitars, synths, samples, even an old zither via a crummy portable recorder, and everything that I've thrown at this pedal has come out sounding fantastic.



If you look up videos of the Instant LoFi Junky online you'll find a lot of demos of it being used like a typical chorus pedal, but I prefer to use it as a lofi vibrato pedal. You can twiddle the middle knob to adjust the balance of the signal, hard left giving you a clean compressed signal, and anywhere in the middle producing a chorus effect combining the clean and lofi signals, but crank that knob all the way to the right and you'll hear the truly crusty sound this pedal was built to make - a dense, warm, saturated tone, with pitch modulation available via the depth and speed knobs. You can set the shape of the pitch modulation with the switch on the top right. For the typical lofi effect, you set the middle knob all the way to 'lofi', the shape switch far left, keep the speed fairly low and then dial in a bit of wobbly pitch with the depth knob. It sounds lush!



My only criticism is that the pedal loses a lot of high end, even with the tone control fully open. This is of course a big part of how it produces its warm, full-bodied sound, but I would have liked to have been able to let a bit more high end through on some sources. That said, it's a pretty minor quibble for a pedal that achieves everything it sets out to! I'll be using mine a lot on forthcoming projects.