EarthQuaker Devices Bit Commander V2 Analog Octave Synth Pedal Reviews
Relive the glory days of primitive mono synths and nostalgic chiptune-y leads! The Bit Commander V2 pedal blends your guitar or bass signal with sub-octave rumble and octave-up shriek for some pronounced effects. Flip to your neck pickup to play single notes. Above the seventh fret, the Bit Commander V2 yields tight and predictable results. Below that, tracking gets a bit volatile, resulting in all kinds of glitching, stuttering fun. At Sweetwater, we've found this pedal pairs great with fuzz for splatty Jack White textures and deep, earth-moving bass. And the Bit Commander V2 pedal monophonic analog guitar synthesizer pedal features soft-touch relay-based switching for silent operation.
Earn $10 back in Bonus Bucks† OR pay $9/month with 24 month financing*
$10 Earn $10.00 back in Bonus Bucks† on this purchase when you use your Sweetwater Credit Card without financing. Select your offer in checkout. Terms
As low as $9/month
with 24 month financing*
See all payment options
Customer Reviews
Customer Added Media
This product doesn't have any review media yet!
Sweetwater Reviews
Logan Miller
Share Your Thoughts
Help other music gear aficionados by sharing your opinions of gear you've purchased.
Questions about the BitCommV2?
Or call us at (800) 222-4700
Sweetwater's Sales Engineers are regarded as the most experienced and knowledgeable professionals in the music industry, with extensive music backgrounds and intense training on the latest products and technologies. They are available to offer you personalized product advice any time you need it.
Highest Rated Reviews
Awesome synth pedal
So I"m just gonna say I love this thing. Got it last weekend at gearfest, knew I had to have one after hearing it demoed. Haven"t been able to remove it from my signal chain yet. It"s a mono synth with some lovely dirtiness to it. Makes me think of dead weather a little bit, that gnarly fuzzy noise is just beautiful. Handles single coils, lipstick pups and buckers equally well - have really enjoyed a tele through it most on the neck pup through a cheapo fender vaporizer amp. I"m sure the neighbors appreciate the amount of time I spend tweaking this thing - it is loud and low!
Love it
This pedal is quirky as hell and I love it. Don't buy it expecting something super clean and perfectly tracking - expect a gnarly weird analog experience and enjoy!
The tracking on bass on the "Down" signal (1 octave down) is a little funky once you get down to a low D or so, but I find if I pluck over the fingerboard or otherwise reduce incoming high end, it cleans up a lot. I actually really like the occasional tracking glitches, it doesn't sound bad, you just get unexpected octave changes.
Crazy pedal
This pedal is not for the traditionally minded musician. It has a mind of it's own as it does what it wants. All of the bottom knobs create a pretty unique sound which makes for a ton of tonal options and the filter knob basically brightens and darkens the tone to my ear. I wouldn't call this a bit crusher as the name may imply, and it's not an octave pedal, it's a goofy synth pedal that doesn't set itself up like a synth. It's an EQD pedal so it's hard to describe what it does, but you know it's gonna be awesome. If you're ok with the notes holding a little bit after you anticipate, then I say give this a go. It's a fun piece of equipment.
Nice textures -- need something to boost your volume though
Picked this up at the Sweetwater Retail store. Pretty cool little pedal, I've wanted a synth/bit crushing pedal.
Based on my research this is all Analog which would be a Synth as opposed to Bit Crusher. At minimum bit crushing requires a digital chip loaded with code to manage the conversion of bit depth of the audio input. Some of the bit crushers out there are pretty crazy and require tons of tweaking to get usable sounds that don't make your head want to explode. This one was pretty easy to tweak and get some cool tones right away.
My goal with this pedal to give me some additional textures, which it definitely accomplishes. I've ran it in front of delays, echos, vibratos, overdrives (do overdrives last, I had little success).
The one complaint I have is that you absolutely must run a signal booster in front of it. Compressor, volume, EQ, etc. I ran it with some high powered passives including a JB and SH-5 and the pedal reacts badly to a straight passive signal. It seems to require a certain level of volume to process the signal. Without a volume boost, the bass strings can sound very flubby. The treble strings sometimes don't actually pick up for processing. If you have a dynamic picking attack, and most of us do, it'll kill your tone. Sustain? Forget about it. Chords? They sounded dead and mushy.
However, if you can push a stronger signal to it, it changes the pedal drastically. It'll sound so much better. Much thicker, more full. More sustain, but not as much as I'd like. Chording becomes an option, palm muting actually sounds good, and you can utilize some pick attack. It was a night and day difference for me. I would consider some type of output boost a necessity.
That said, the level my compressor has to output to keep things where I want them is a little hissy. I'll have to play with an EQ and Noisegate as well.
I consider this all fairly minor though. Love the pedal and what it's able to do.
I bought this as a way to get in to
