Caveinator: inverse pitch-shift delay for guitar

A guitar patch built around mode 7 of the BOSS PS-3 Digital Pitch Shifter/Delay, “SINGLE P.S.: +/- 2 oct (Inverse)”. That is the sound all over Cave In’s Jupiter, and the reason the pedal got the nickname “Caveinator”.

What it does: your note comes back reversed and pitch-shifted. The shifted sound is fed back through the shifter, so every repeat climbs (or falls) by the same interval again. With PITCH at +12 you get the rising octave swell that sits behind the riff.

The controls follow the pedal: BALANCE, F.BACK and PITCH, as the PS-3 owner’s manual describes them for mode 7. Three extras are added: TIME, for the length of the reversed chunk (fixed inside the pedal); WIDTH, for a stereo spread the mono pedal does not have; and ROOM, a short room reverb around the whole sound, because on the record you hear the pedal through an amp in a room.

This is an independent patch made with stock ZOIA modules. It is modelled on the pedal’s documented behaviour and voiced by ear against the record. It is not a clone, and it is not affiliated with or endorsed by BOSS or Roland.

QUICK START

1. Copy 001_zoia_Caveinator.bin to your SD card (change the 001 prefix to the slot you want), then Config > Patches from SD.
2. Guitar into input L. Use both outputs for stereo.
3. Play. The default is the Jupiter-style voice: octave up, mostly effect, short reversed chunks.
4. Press Star with nothing selected to reach the six controls from anywhere.
5. For the bare pedal, set ROOM to 0.

Requires firmware 5.00 or later (the patch uses the Reverse Delay module).

CONTROLS (star list, in this order)

BALAN|number = BALANCE
Dry/effect crossfade, scaled so the encoder covers it quickly.
0 = dry only · 0.125 = equal parts (the centre click on the pedal) · 0.25 = effect only. Above 0.25 nothing changes.
Default 0.196 (about 78% effect).

FBACK|number = F.BACK
How much of the shifted sound is fed back, from 0 to 1. Each pass is shifted again, so higher settings stack more intervals on top. Keep it well below 1: at the top it self-oscillates.
Default 0.093.

PITCH|pitch = PITCH
Shift in semitones. The pedal offers every semitone up to +/-12, then +/-24 at the end of the knob’s travel; 0 is unison. Set it by the semitone number, or click the encoder for cents (1200 = one octave). In-between values are out of tune.
Default +12.

TIME|number (not on the pedal)
Length of the reversed chunk: 0 to 1 = 62.5 to 547 ms (ms = 62.5 + 484 x value).
Default 0.135 = 128 ms.

WIDTH|mix (not on the pedal)
0 = both outputs identical, like the pedal in mode 7 · 100 = dry in the centre, effect spread to the sides.
Default 100.

ROOM|number (not on the pedal)
Room reverb on everything, dry signal included: 0 = no room · 0.25 = room only. Short decay (0.7 s) with the highs rolled off.
Default 0.055 (about 22%).

STARTING POINTS

BALANCE FBACK PITCH TIME WIDTH ROOM
Jupiter octave (default) 0.196 0.093 +12 0.135 100 0.055
Behind the riff 0.06 0.30 +12 0.135 50 0.055
Fifth up, warmer 0.15 0.20 +7 0.135 100 0.08
Reverse delay 0.25 0.30 0 0.25 0 0
Falling 0.15 0.25 -12 0.135 100 0.055
Bare pedal 0.196 0.093 +12 0.135 0 0

“Reverse delay” follows the sample setting in the pedal’s manual (mode 7 with PITCH at unison). “Behind the riff” approximates a forum setting for the Cave In sound: BALANCE just under 9 o’clock, F.BACK between 10 and 11.

TIPS

– Dirt after the patch makes the octave swells break up; dirt before it keeps them cleaner and more bell-like.
– Single notes and open intervals track better than fast palm-muted riffs.
– Moving TIME while playing makes the effect glide in pitch for a moment.
– For mono rigs, set WIDTH to 0 and use output L.
– Press Save after tweaking to keep your settings as the patch defaults.

UNDER THE HOOD

IN > Reverse Delay (effect only) > 8 kHz low-pass > stereo Audio Balance (BALANCE) > Room Reverb > OUT L/R. The Reverse Delay does the reversing, the pitch shift and the feedback. Three Value modules drive BALANCE, F.BACK and TIME by CV. For WIDTH, the right-hand effect signal is crossfaded with a copy delayed by 13 ms. A Room Reverb sits last, after the balance, so it treats dry and effect together.

WHERE THE NUMBERS COME FROM

– Knob functions, the BALANCE law (centre = 1:1), the PITCH steps and the identical A/B outputs come from the PS-3 owner’s manual.
– TIME defaults to 128 ms. That is an estimate: the intro of “In the Stream of Commerce” shows a repetition every 128 ms in the range where the effect sits, and 128 ms is 4096 samples at the pedal’s 32 kHz sampling rate. The song’s pulse is close to three times that, so part of that reading may be rhythm.
– BALANCE and F.BACK defaults were set by ear.
– ROOM is not part of the pedal. Its level and decay are a judgement call to sit closer to the record, not a measurement.
– A fixed 8 kHz low-pass on the effect stands in for the pedal’s slightly darker tone. The patch does not reproduce the 32 kHz converters or the pedal’s own pitch-shifting artifacts.

SPECS

2 pages · 12 modules · 17 connections
CPU about 31% (ZoE estimate)
Mono in (L), stereo out
Firmware 5.00 or later

CREDITS

Built and checked with ZoE, the visual patch editor by alh (rawmedium.org/ZoE).
Inspired by the BOSS PS-3 and by Cave In’s Jupiter.

v1.0: first public release.