Simplification Works : Moving Away from Option Paralysis

You’ve likely heard of the new Micro Pitch Delay unit from respected effects builder Eventide. It is a very powerful effects pedal, and if you have not experienced it, I would strongly recommend watching the video from musician Pete Thorn found here on YouTube. I watched a number of review videos as it appeared that Eventide got a lot of units out for review, although my site is not yet big enough to be included. Yet. It’s when you get an accomplished musician to demo a unit that you get a good sense of its fit, and in my opinion, Pete Thorn is a reliable resource for this kind of thing.

Make something that already exists elsewhere more usable - that is simplification

An interesting thing happens in tools for creatives, whether audio, video or stills photography. First come very straightforward and focused tools that do one or two things extremely well. Then come the “everything including the sink, as well as a bunch of stuff that you’ll never use” devices so marketing can say stuff like “includes 10 bazillion presets” while leaving out that a dozen of them may actually be useful.

Eventide is, in my perspective, one of the few organizations who figured out that the second wave was not working so well. That’s not because they are a lot smarter than everyone else, although their effects do sound superb when used intelligently, it’s because customer feedback on excellent tools was increasingly negative, and to their credit, they listened.

Take for example the incredible H9 Max pedal. It’s everything that they have made in a single pedal. Literally hundreds of effect presets, many of them useful out of the box. Unfortunately the device user interface is plagued by the desire to deliver control of massively complex effects with minimal interaction options. The availability of an iOS app to control the device over Bluetooth is less a benefit than a necessity. For those who play by presets, it’s decent, but for the rest of us who like to tweak and poke and prod and experiment, it’s less painful to poke yourself with sharpened knitting needles.

I know a lot of musicians who bought the expensive H9 Max and in short order relegated it to do one thing on their boards because tweaking is such a massive pain in the ass and near unusable without the app. I don’t have the skill to be doing complex multi-finger adjustments to a pedal while still trying to play. Maybe you do, in which case, kudos to you. Most of the folks that I speak with, feel as I do.

Why am I picking on the H9 Max? Because the Micro Pitch Delay has existed in it for quite a while. In fairness, Eventide is one of VERY few companies that actually add value through software updates and not just bug fixes. Specifically updates to the original H9 Max added micro pitch delay and tricera chorus. Other makers should take note.

This is where I commend Eventide for giving customers more options when choosing a pedal. The Micro Pitch Delay has five preset options, although you can load more via software. It’s blatantly easy to use with a clean and informative user interface. One might even say elegant in its simplicity.

There’s already a great deal of enthusiasm for the Micro Pitch Delay even though the effects exist already in the H9 Max. While the H9 is marketed as a pedal board tool, it is more suitable for use in studio than live. The Micro Pitch Delay is built for the live player.

Where I live, a fully optioned out H9 Max sells for $888 CAD. A Micro Pitch Delay sells for $355. In terms of what you get for your investment in features, the H9 Max is a killer offering, there really is nothing else like it in the price point. However in terms of player usability, the Micro Pitch Delay is a better choice if it does the thing that you want.

This is not the first pedal from Eventide to do this. They pulled algorithms from the H9 Max which pulled them from the older SPACE pedal and put them in the much simplified Black Hole.

Again, this is not something net new, it’s a simplified repackaging of algorithms that already exist in two other pedals.

A drawback of all-in-ones, is that mostly they can do hundreds of things but only one at a time. I know of a player with three H9 Max units on his board because he loves the Eventide effects but wants more than one of them at a time. The simplification in the Micro Pitch Delay, the Black Hole and the coming UltraTap are built for these kind of players.

In no way am I slamming Eventide. I like their effects. I own an H9 Max, a Mod Factor and a Time Factor. I dislike the pedal UIs on all of them, but when I do get an effect that I like, the sounds are superb. I like the Eventide Leslie effect. I like their Tape Echo implementation and I like the Micro Pitch now that I have found it in the miasma of effects in the H9 Max (thanks to Pete Thorn). However, for a player like myself, and perhaps you as well, I don’t need option paralysis, I want great sounding effects that deliver the sounds that I want to use without requiring a hat dance and the invocation of dark magic to get to them easily, quickly and with my limited memory of complex button selections.

It’s not just Eventide who see this option and the possibilities. I own a Strymon Big Sky, a widely loved reverb pedal with tons of options and enough knobs to make a space shuttle pilot happy. It sounds terrific when I get it dialled in, but in an open analysis, I find that I use the much simpler to operate Blue Sky five times as much. This does not mean that the Big Sky is bad. I use it more now in the studio than anywhere else where I have the time and the mindset to fiddle. When I am playing for my own pleasure, I use the Blue Sky for its simpler tweak ability and lower likelihood to bring about option paralysis. There’s also an age impact. I like bigger text and bigger controls. I have larger sausage fingers and small knobs and tiny print makes me less likely to use otherwise nice effects (sorry Wampler Terraform) When an effect is on the desk, it’s easier to see an use. When it’s on the floor, not so much. Your personal mileage in this regard may vary.

i prefer simple to complex. Simplicity is a potential evolutionary path for complexity. Ease of use drives adoption. Kudos to the folks at Eventide for getting this point.

Thanks for reading, until next time, peace.