Pedals that can’t be easily explained put a smile on our face. When you try and try but can’t quite place the category you need to put a certain effect into, you know you’re gonna have some fun with it. Today’s pedal is the epitome of this, defying logic and refusing to be corralled into any specific genre. Although we never had the opportunity to try out v1, the Cooper FX Generation Loss v2 sounds just as wild, unacceptable and prolific as you’d think it would.
This is the sound of nostalgia.
The Generation Loss brings together all aspects of tape degradation and uses a combination of effects to hone in on that sound we’re all familiar with. The name refers to the decrease in sound quality and introduction of noise and sound artifacts each time a copy is made on magnetic media such as tape. Random pitch fluctuations, filters to cut down on the signal’s bandwidth, sample rate reduction, and noise are all brought together in this pedal to mimic that sound, without the need for a broken VHS player. Exploration is key for a pedal like this, and if you’re not into weird sounds and randomness, this might not be the one for you…
As far as controls here, there are a bunch. Wow starts things off, controlling the slow, gentle pitch fluctuations, while Flutter refers to the faster, more random fluctuations that achieve “that” tape sound. LP and HP set the sounds of a low-pass and high-pass filter, respectively, while Wet and Dry control the amounts of both your Wet and Dry signals in the audio path. Gen sets the sample rate of the effect, lowering the quality of the audio as you turn it down, and Noise increases or decreases the amount of static white noise that shines through in all it’s messy glory.
The Aux switch is tied in with the FUNC button, to determine what effect is produced when Aux is pressed: Tape Stop, Garbled Tape or Spectral Freeze/Drone. There’s also a PRST button, which allows you to scroll through 3 on-board presets (more available via MIDI, too). All this wrapped up into one fine-looking enclosure gives you a powerful, unique and exploratory device, one that is highly sought-after in the pedal community. Head over to the Cooper FX website for more info and next batch release date info on the Generation Loss v2, and don’t forget to check out the TWO DEMOS we did for this one, stepping outside the box and launching into uncharted sonic territory….cheers!
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