Usually, reading a manual for a piece of gear is utilitarian and not much more, a way to glean the intended way to operate something. It was a nice surprise to open Hologram’s Chroma Console Multi-Effector manual and find a note by the two designers of the pedal detailing their inspiration for making it, that being the magic that can happen when a device is used not quite in the way it was intended. It makes the reasoning a bit clearer, and elevates this multi-effects pedal into something more; something with obvious passion.
Chroma Console is built on four different categories (called Modules) of effects, each with five different types: Character (Drive, Sweeten, Fuzz, Howl, Swell), Movement (Doubler, Vibrato, Phaser, Tremolo, Pitch), Diffusion (Cascade, Reels, Space, Collage, Reverse), and Texture (Filter, Squash, Cassette, Broken, Interference). The names of the effects—as opposed to the categories—spell out pretty well what each Module has to offer, and you can use anywhere from one effect to four, and put them in any order you’d like.
How many times have you wondered what it would sound like to do the unthinkable and run your reverb first in your effects chain, then through a tremolo and a monster fuzz? I find that it’s easy to get set in my ways when it comes to my effects chain and a lot of times I’m more willing to spend hundreds on a new pedal hoping for some magic than doing a bit of rearranging. I lose interest. But what I really lose interest in is the endless scrolling of menus. Chroma Console is different. You can tell it was made for experimentation and quick changes.
Each Module has an Amount/Effect Volume control and a Button to switch its given effect or bypass it altogether, which from left to right are A, B, C, and D buttons used for secondary controls and other functions. Character, Movement, and Diffusion each have a dual-function control to further sculpt (Tilt/Sensitivity, Rate/Drift, TimeDrift) with an overall Mix/Output Level control above the Texture module. There’s a Bypass/Preset (save up to eighty presets) footswitch, and a Tap/Capture (for tap tempo or recording knob movements in Gesture mode) footswitch, and also the Hologram four-color light menu. Chroma Console can be used in mono or stereo, has an input for a configurable expression pedal, and has a MIDI in and out.
Since Chroma Console goes without a screen, that means deeper menus/parameters are reached with some button combos/menus, and the four-color menu and the light up control buttons are used here. It’s all pretty easy to do, with no balancing act or extra hands/fingers required. Naturally, the secondary control for a given effect depends on which effect is selected in a given module, but it’s a quick thing to dial in an effect to your liking.
First, I wanted to just hear each effect by themselves. Sometimes (read: a lot) multi-effects units offer a lot of options to the detriment of the quality of what’s on offer. I’ve used Hologram’s Microcosm, which has great effects, so I was expecting more greatness and I wasn’t disappointed. I tested the effects with both my electric guitar (a vintage Japanese Gibson SG copy) and my modular, and it worked well in both worlds. It’s too laborious to go over each effect here, but overall the effects sounded excellent, were very usable on their own, and could be tweaked and configured quite a bit: from tone to type, each of the effects can be customized. The Character module supplied everything from subtle drive to nasty fuzz and rivaled the numerous pedals I have for those duties. I wouldn’t hesitate to use Chroma Console as a standalone fuzz/distortion/OD pedal, and that might be the highest compliment you can give a pedal like this, since guitarists can be so tone-picky (guilty as charged!). I found the Character effects to work well with modular, too; really versatile, with enough shaping capabilities for everything from blowing out a kick drum to pumping up a bassline.
The Movement module was the one I was most curious about, as I’m really picky about tremolo and phaser pedals. I love optical tremolos and am pretty partial to my homebrew Small Stone (with Uni-Vibe mods) clone that I built many years ago. I was able to dial in the tremolo on Chroma Console to be super smooth and pleasing, and the phaser was pretty perfect right from the get go as well. The Diffusion effect was surprising, offering BBD-style delay, a pretty nice Space Echo emulation, and a simple, beautiful reverb, as well as a spontaneous looping delay (love it!) and a reverse delay. In my modular world, reverb is king, and there really isn’t a one-size-fits all for me, and I’m more picky than guitar tone purists in this regard. It can take me a lot of time and even more modules and pedals to find what I’m looking for, and I found Chroma Console’s reverb—simple as it may be in terms of control—lovely. The final Module, Texture, is mostly concerned with filtering and intermittent working and interruption; random pitch drops (Broken), telecom disturbances (Interference), and a requisite broken cassette player. I’m very familiar with broken equipment that you need to smack to get working, and this is one thing Chroma Console offers that you really can’t find anywhere else: emulation of broken gear other than tape wow or flutter. In fact, it’s this random working probability—chance ops, if you will—that harkens back to the manual’s inspired introduction. It’s funny to find magic in ill equipment, but it’s also not surprising that the surprises are what we sometimes seek in a world full of reliability. Yeah, right!
Gesture recording, recording of the knob movements, is easy to enter and exit simply by pressing down C and D together, and you can overdub knob movements as well as speed or slow the gestures with the Tap Tempo button (or by using MIDI). I love being able to automate things like trem rate, reverb size, and fuzz amount, and while I wasn’t able to clock it in a patch, I gotta say this feature is a damn good time. In the same vein, you can enter Capture mode and loop/sustain up to thirty seconds of recording. Hold down Tap/Capture and you’re off. Again, super easy to do, and incredibly fun. For guitar this was pretty cool, but for modular…truly something spectacular. Hands-on looping+gesture recording+parameter tweaking? Yes, please. Moving the effects around in terms of order was pretty interesting (press A+D to enter that mode) and made me wish doing so with a pedal board was just as easy. It does cut your sound while rearranging, so I had to try and remember what a previous setting sounded like to do a real time comparison test, but again—it was fast, easy and effective.
Setting up an expression pedal was simple as well, and it’s nice to be able to use your foot to control something like filter cutoff (when’s the last time you did a filter sweep with your foot?) or reverb amount in the modular realm, as both hands are usually busy patching/tweaking and this offers another way to control and modulate things. I didn’t get into using MIDI with Chroma Console, but you can pretty much MIDI control anything that Chroma Console has to offer.
There is a lot at play here with the effects themselves being only part of the fun. With the ability to quickly change the order, automate the parameter changes, and loop/record, Chroma Console is most definitely versatile. I was really appreciative of the mode diagram on the pedal itself, freeing me of what would have been necessary manual referencing, and making Chroma Console so easy to understand, navigate, and enjoy—for both guitar and modular. The Texture module, in particular Cassette, Broken, and Interference, were really the stars for me with their intended intermittent functionality, adding a lot of flavor and randomness to sounds, and I thought the Character options on guitar were superb. I lost a lot of time in that realm looping some reverb and phasey texture while noodling fuzz heavy single-note solos on top of it. Capture mode was great, for both near granular looping, to spacey droning to longer, more performance-based snippet recordings. It was immediate and rewarding, and with so many textures available coming from just the pedal itself, the only learning curve was dialing in the perfect pre and post recording levels.
Whether working simply as a single effect, in a slightly more complex way as a multiple effect unit, or being used in full effect with all guns a-blazin', Chroma Console is a ton of fun. Way more than just some effects box, the multi-color LEDs and overall look give insight to what Chroma Console really is; an artist's palette that can be configured to fit your needs, and can wow (and flutter!) and surprise.

Price: $399

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