Description
Alexander Pedals continues their innovative Neo Series line with the all-new Defender Stargate Drive. This incredibly unique pedal is much more than your average gain-stage, with a retro-inspired tone and graphics that give it an identity all its own. As a Neo Series pedal, it's crammed with cool preset tones, and also allows for you to make your own with its dual-footswitch design. With its deep set of controls, you can access everything from bit-crushed distortion/fuzz to warm, vintage-style overdrive, but the bread and butter of the Defender is its retro-inspired sounds. If you're looking for a wholly unique, yet versatile digital overdrive with a throwback look, then go with Alexander FX's Defender.
OVERVIEW
Controls:
Press and hold the center button while turning the knobs to activate the alternate controls.
-LEVEL: Adjusts the overall output level of the Defender. The pedal has quite a bit of volume on tap, enough to overdrive your amp.
-DRIVE: Controls the amount of drive, saturation, and distortion of the effect.
-WARP: Adjusts the speed of the WARP control. With this control at minimum the Defender will warp between the red and blue settings instantly. With the control at maximum the pedal will take approximately 10 seconds to warp.
-LIGHT: Controls the treble or brightness of the distortion effect or the cutoff frequency of the filter if FLT is selected.
-BLEND: Mixes the clean signal (fully counter-clockwise) with the distorted signal (fully clockwise. This is a really crucial control for using the Defender with bass or low-tuned guitars, allowing you to dial in some clean signal to increase the articulation.
-MATTER: Controls the bass or depth of the distorted tone or the resonance / feedback of the filter if FLT is selected.
-TWEAK: Adjusts the special effect for each distortion mode.
WARP Switch:
Tap this footswitch to accelerate the Defender into warp drive! While Warp is active, the Defender will move to a second unique setting of your choice. Just turn the pedal knobs while Warp is active to set the Warp tone. Tap the footswitch again to return to the regular sound. ALL knob settings may be changed as part of the Warp mode, but the distortion and effect selections must stay the same.
The Warp speed may be adjusted by holding the Select button and turning the Drive knob. Low settings of Warp will cause the pedal to move into and out of Warp mode instantly, while higher settings will accelerate into and out of Warp mode more gradually.
You can also hold the Warp footswitch to activate Impulse mode, which will enter and exit Warp mode only as long as you hold the footswitch down. Try using Warp to set two different distorted sounds for rhythm and lead, or using the Impulse function to add some filtering or space delay to the climax of a solo! The possibilities are endless, and if you engage it while flying backwards around the sun you may end up saving some whales...
Bypass: The Defender features a buffered bypass using a soft-touch footswitch. The dry signal path is digital to maintain the phase relationship between distortion and clean. The bypass signal is 100% analog.
Configuration:
To configure, power on while holding the center Select button and release when the program LEDs start to flash.
Tap the Select button to choose Expression (upper LED blue,) Foot Switch (upper LED violet,) or MIDI (upper LED red.)
Turn the Rate knob to select the function for the Neo Footswitch - Counterclockwise for sequence start / restart, center for preset select, clockwise for tap tempo.
Turn the Matter / Tweak knob to set the main LED brightness.
If you wish to assign the Defender MIDI channel, simply send a program change message from your controller on the correct channel while the pedal is in configuration mode. Hold the Select button to save the pedal settings.
The Defender MIDI port requires the use of either a MIDI converter box such as the Disaster Area / Chase Bliss MIDIBox or a MIDI controller that supports 1/4" devices such as the Disaster Area Gen3 series. The Defender defaults to using MIDI Channel 1.
HOLD THE SELECT BUTTON TO SAVE CONFIGURATION
Power Supply:
The Defender requires a 9V DC power supply with a 2.1mm pin, center negative, 80mA. The Defender is not designed to be powered on supplies higher than 9V and does not use a battery. The Defender should work fine on a multi-pedal "daisy chain" connector, but if you encounter excessive noise or hum try a separate power supply.
