This is Ghosts — our new physical modeling effect and instrument.
Excite high-fidelity strings, tubes, and bars to conjure resonant objects and acoustic environments: a blooming cello, a playful xylophone. From organic realism to spectral fantasy.
Retune the voices to preset chords — including custom chords and microtonal scales. Connect a MIDI keyboard for polyphonic play and the full spectrum of its synthesis engine.
Animate the contact mic and capture gestures with a built-in looper. Transform the resonators with Touch Modes — from a streaming granular processor, to a Bode frequency shifter, to a virtual-analog drum machine.
Ghosts is a compact partner in sympathetic resonance, harmony and rhythm.
Scenes from April - building and testing Ghosts. QC is serious business around here.
Sid (our feline son) is the face of KATS - the Kinotone Assisted Testing System.
First round: a bed of nails test. We probe the PCB at many points simultaneously to catch electrical faults. This can range from a simple solder bridge to a hidden short that might otherwise take an hour to hunt down. If something is wrong with a PCB, our goal is to catch and fix the issue before the board ever makes it into an enclosure.
Round two: a complete functional test of every pot, button, footswitch, LED, and both the MIDI and CV circuits.
Each unit also undergoes frequency sweeps across the audio spectrum - checking for anomalies that wouldn’t be perceptible by a person just testing pedals with headphones. We of course do a final listening test, but by that point there’s a trail of data tied to the unit’s serial number, so it’s more of a haptic feel test for warm and fuzzies before sending the pedal off to its new home.
We could certainly move faster if we didn’t test so much, but we care a lot about this stuff, so a slow and steady pace feels worth it.
The @kinotone Ghosts is an anomaly. I wouldn’t even call it a guitar effect. It’s a texture. It’s an instrument. It’s an experience. It’s a 6-voice polyphonic physical modeling engine that lets you add subtle harmonic resonance to your instrument or completely transform it into a vibrating echo chamber of its own. On top of that, it can also double as a drum machine, a looper, a full-blown polyphonic synthesizer, a lush reverb, a granular processor and a wild universe of feedback. This is me trying to describe something that's basically impossible to describe. This inspiring device needs to be experienced! And you can experience a bit of its deep potential over at my YouTube channel right now! 🎉
And if you're in the EU, then you can also buy Kinotone Ghosts at my web shop thepedalzone.com ❤️
All Sparks orders placed in October, November and December have shipped.
Thanks so much to everyone who picked something up during our big winter pre-order. We’re going to take a week long nap now 😴
The @kinotone Ghosts is a 6-voice chordal resonator effect and instrument. Here I’m running guitars and the snare through it, and playing it as an instrument with midi. Ghosts is really my first experience messing with a resonator effect. It’s been fun learning this device, and I still have plenty of exploring to do with it. Full demo is up on my channel. :)
#guitarpedals #resonator #geartalk #guitar #guitarpedal
All Ghosts and Ribbons have shipped. 💚
The exception is if your order includes a Sparks, which isn’t ready yet. We’re happy to split things up if you ask though - email [email protected]
There will be more Ghosts in the new year. Happy holidays everyone. 🎄
Based in Minneapolis, @kinotone makes playful but powerful electronics used by musicians and engineers. For a recent trade show they swapped the typical glossy brochure for this tabloid about their products. Founder Jaak Jensen designed it himself!
@kinotone says: “Most event handouts feel disposable. We use uncoated, matte finishes in our packaging, so a newspaper felt aligned. It’s organic, personal and a bit nostalgic. People were thrilled – we heard lots of ‘nobody prints things these days!’ comments.”
We loved this sound so much that we made it the first factory preset. Engage the Touch footswitch right out of the box and this is what you’ll hear!
The audio stream gets chopped up into tiny fragments that pluck the resonators – creating a kind of multi-tap delay effect that chases what you play.
Ghosts is a hybrid device – it’s both an effect and an instrument. Here we’re strumming the contact mic like an autoharp.
There’s plenty of fun to be had with the tuning controls on the front panel – but you can also use a MIDI keyboard to tune the resonators directly and play polyphonic chord progressions.
