In keeping with their unique brand of effects pedals that we’ve loved here for years, KMA Machines has come out with another innovative, intriguing gem of a pedal. The Moai Maea Analog Subsonic Octaver is an octave pedal, to be sure, but one like no other we’ve encountered. Spewing forth a plethora of both low and high-octave choices, you’re able to mix and match tones to produce some special sounds with the greatest of ease.
Moai Maea is KMA Audio Machines’ answer to long forgotten analog octaver tones. The pedal generates one higher octave and up to two sub-octaves, helping you generate a huge wall of sound by playing just one note. The higher octave has an edgy and fuzzy character which is reminiscent of old late ‘60s early ‘70s octave-up tones, as used by legends like Hendrix or The Stooges. The sub-octaves turn your guitar into a filthy bass guitar with ground shaking lows. Choose between either the first (-I), the second (-II) or both together (-I/-II), which gives you the sought-after wall of sound.
The Moai Maea also gives you the possibility to create an individual mix of each generated octave and the original signal. To expand your soundscapes, the pedal features a serial buffered FX-Loop, within the clean path, plus a phase inverter to avoid phase-cancelation when mixing signals this way. Each octave section is foot-switchable. You can turn on and off the higher octave by jumping on the SHRIEK switch and the sub-octave by the DRONE switch. So if you are looking for a pedal to you that extra edge for your guitar sound, Moai Maea might well be the nirvana you’ve been looking for.
Now, this is a monophonic pedal, meaning for clean and perfect tracking, you should play single notes….however, chords sound crazy awesome, getting distorted and glitchy and all kinds of rad, making this a fun experimenter’s effect for sure. Hard to describe on paper, the Moai Maea Analog Subsonic Octaver is best heard, and you can do so by viewing our demo video below, where we run through a slew of settings and show you what this purple-headed warrior is capable of. As always, ours hats are off to the KMA Machines crew on yet another marvelous creation, one that inspires and astounds us at the same time. Cheers!
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