Raise your hand if you ’ ve felt a subtle twinge of disappointment with every Strymon release since February 25 , 2014 . Ours are up . We ’ re assuming yours are , too . But if not — you ’ re probably wondering about the significance of that date .
Well , that ’ s the day that Ben Allison , a Bay Area graphic designer , pulled off a fairly epic troll .
“ I ’ ve experimented with 3D graphics off and on over the past 20 years ,” he said when we contacted him for this feature . “ I ’ d been looking for a project to keep my photorealism skills sharp . Nothing too complicated , just an inanimate object with hard edges and flat surfaces .”
So Ben set to work , creating a fictitious new pedal that not only offered the degree of complexity he was looking for , but one that would be gobbled up by the gear community .
“ Strymon was the perfect fit . It ’ s a heavily
hyped company ( deservedly so ; its products are incredible ) and the renderings turned out better than I ’ d expected — so I had a friend leak them .”
That leak was the Parallax — a pitchshifting mega hoax so good that , even though Strymon denied the leak and Ben quickly came clean on the ruse , you ’ ll occasionally still see mentioned in dark corners of the Internet .
Ben says he ’ s given permission to Strymon to use the name , but whether it ’ s called the Parallax or something entirely different , here ’ s our if-you-wish-upon-a-star moment that such a thing comes to be in 2017 .
* Note : If you ’ re just finding out that the Parallax was a hoax , you have our sincerest apologies . We totally should ’ ve yelled “ Spoiler alert !”
We were early advocates for the Tech 21 Fly Rig 5 .
A STRYMON PITCH SHIFTER
Raise your hand if you ’ ve felt a subtle twinge of disappointment with every Strymon release since February 25 , 2014 . Ours are up . We ’ re assuming yours are , too . But if not — you ’ re probably wondering about the significance of that date .
Well , that ’ s the day that Ben Allison , a Bay Area graphic designer , pulled off a fairly epic troll .
“ I ’ ve experimented with 3D graphics off and on over the past 20 years ,” he said when we contacted him for this feature . “ I ’ d been looking for a project to keep my photorealism skills sharp . Nothing too complicated , just an inanimate object with hard edges and flat surfaces .”
So Ben set to work , creating a fictitious new pedal that not only offered the degree of complexity he was looking for , but one that would be gobbled up by the gear community .
“ Strymon was the perfect fit . It ’ s a heavily
hyped company ( deservedly so ; its products are incredible ) and the renderings turned out better than I ’ d expected — so I had a friend leak them .”
That leak was the Parallax — a pitchshifting mega hoax so good that , even though Strymon denied the leak and Ben quickly came clean on the ruse , you ’ ll occasionally still see mentioned in dark corners of the Internet .
Ben says he ’ s given permission to Strymon to use the name , but whether it ’ s called the Parallax or something entirely different , here ’ s our if-you-wish-upon-a-star moment that such a thing comes to be in 2017 .
* Note : If you ’ re just finding out that the Parallax was a hoax , you have our sincerest apologies . We totally should ’ ve yelled “ Spoiler alert !”
A TECH 21 FLYRIG — FOR ACOUSTIC GUITAR
We were early advocates for the Tech 21 Fly Rig 5 .
12 TONE TALK // New Year , New Gear