Watch Sarah Longfield explore Red Panda and IK Multimedia's impressive new stompbox offerings

We may have lost two NAMM conventions to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, but take heart: Summer NAMM 2021 happened and Sarah Longfield ventured out to Music City on behalf of Guitar World to document it.

While in town, she stopped by the Red Panda booth to investigate the company's new Raster 2 pedal, which is a digital delay that includes a pitch and frequency shifter integrated into the feedback loop. Forward or reverse delay on the pedal can be shifted once or have continuously shifted repeats.

The pedal delivers a wide range of sounds including modulated and harmonized delays, reverse delays, chorus, arpeggios, infinite descents, chaotic self-oscillation, and continuously evolving soundscapes.

The Raster’s modulation section has seven waveforms that can be assigned to delay time, pitch shift, or effect level (for tremolo), and there are two random waveforms for glitchy sliced delays or random pitch shift, plus wow and flutter, and broken tape deck effects. 

Envelope and inverse envelope enable dynamic flanging and pitch bent delays, while stereo controls adjust the modulation amount and phase between channels, for subtle shifts or swirling psychedelic washes.

Next up, Sarah headed over to the IK Multimedia booth to check out the company's new Amplitube X-Gear line of digital effects pedals. The line offers four pedals: distortion, modulation, delay and reverb, with each featuring 16 different effects drawn from the most popular AmpliTube models, plus all-new reverb and delay algorithms, each of which is accompanied by an exclusive virtual X-GEAR version. 

Users can run the virtual versions with AmpliTube 5 (SE version included) to record and tweak settings and save as presets on the matching X-GEAR pedal, and each pedal is equipped with a USB port for preset management and use as a recording interface.

Be sure to check out Ik Multimedia's new line of pedals, as well as the new Red Panda Raster II.