Description
Soviet toy transistor organ • Speaker and line out tones for both waveforms, giving four blending options • Range of tones from savage punk anger to fuzzy analogue warmth • Switchable LFO per tone, for vibrato and chorus effects • Envelope control extends the scope to pads and synth patches
The PIF is a tiny Soviet toy organ from the early 1980s. In its original incarnation it boasts just five switches and two knobs. The switch controls are an power switch (red!), a vibrato switch (on or off!), and three tone switches. Two of these are the same tone transposed up or down, but the third is a different, brighter waveform. The knobs control volume and tone – which is to say, a low-pass filter, which does a good job of rounding off the PIF’s frankly insane high-end aggression. For a little pastel-coloured toy, this thing really, really wants to get its punk on.
PIFs came in a variety of colours and we scored a powder-blue one which has been modded with a line out alongside the inbuilt speaker. This is a genuinely useful addition, since the waveform as taken from the output jack is pretty consistent, whereas the speaker both roughs things up and introduces a fair amount of instability to the tone. Naturally, we’ve sampled both speaker and jack sounds, and our version of the PIF allows you to blend between these for both the main waveform and the brighter variant. It also has a basic Attack / Release volume envelope, letting you sculpt non-organ-style sounds using the PIF’s analogue waves.
We’ve also gone a little further than the original in the area of the vibrato / LFO control. Rather than just on and off, you can now set the rate, level and ramp of the vibrato, and you can switch it in or out for each tone component individually. This lends itself to some nice effects where you can have one ‘straight’ wave and then another one with a touch of LFO, generating a very pleasant natural chorussing. There’s also fun to be had detuning the waveforms against each other, and we’ve got a knob to do just that.
Rounding out the front panel is a Volts knob, to crank up some serious distortion; a Tone knob that replicates the same gentle smoothing action of the original; and of course our famous (infamous?) Glitch control, which randomises all the settings on the instrument in a musically-intelligent way. Click when you want a brand-new, unique patch, and see what you get!
On the Effects pane is a selection of tasty effects which can take the PIF into whole new territories. You can lean into its organ heritage by dialling up the Leslie speaker sim or pushing through an Amp Cab; and it sounds amazing running through the convolved Lexicon reverb – though we also favour the Spring reverb settings for this little beast. With a minimum of tweaking you can get some really unusual, original sounds emerging from this little box of tricks – and all with a grungy Soviet-era vibe to them.
It’s no surprise at all to us that the PIF has become something of a secret weapon among electronic musicians. Far from being just a toy, its sheer in-your-face aggression sometimes has to be heard to be believed. If you’re into punk, this thing is definitely for you; but the rest of us can find surprisingly beautiful, eerie tones in here as well. Oh, and there’s a little dog playing the keyboard on the top panel, which honestly is all we needed to know.
Reviews
There are no reviews yet.