We reviewed Endorpin.es’ Ghost, their excellent multi-dimensional effects module, a collaborative effort with Youtuber/musician Andrew Huang, just last issue, and they’re back, this time in pedal form. Ghost Pedal is 24-bit, 96 kHz with 32-bit floating point internal processing, a stereo-enabled pedal/tabletop version (whew!) of the module featuring delay, reverb, bitcrushing, an amp simulator, a filter, and some other bits and bobs. It can save and recall up to nine presets, connect via MIDI, and easily take line or instrument levels. Ghost Pedal retains the superb sounds of the module, and while it has much in common with the Euro version, it also breaks from it in some pretty key ways.
Ghost features a very flexible delay with controls for Time and Repeats/Taps and a 2.5 second max delay time. You can use the Tap button to tap tempo (or MIDI clock the tempo), and there are three different delay settings (RLRL, LRRL, and STEREO). There are nine different time divisions (and a looper) to choose from, and you can opt to have repeating tails or no tails when the delay is turned off. It’s a really flexible delay, clear sounding and pretty, and even morphing the time division produces a satisfying speed catchup with no nastiness, a necessity for delay tweakers like me.
I liked the reverb sound on the Ghost module, and naturally, as it’s the same algorithm, I like it here as well. Three different types are available: Hall/Shimmer, Reverse, and Spring, and they cover a ton of ground. You can get the bathroom tile springy slapback thing or get lost in a siren-y vastness of outer space. With a Tone control—a tilt EQ—that enables you to tame your incoming signal, dialing in a perfect—and many times an absolutely beautiful—reverb is easy to do using just the Reverb, Decay, and Pre-delay controls. You can also add more flavor to each setting by programming the Tap button (more on this) to mode 3; Hall/Shimmer has a Freeze function, Reverse adds some shimmer, and Spring has a Spring Excite, so that when Taps is pressed and held, you get a reverb swell. Watch out here; it can get loud fast. The Freeze function is great, looping your reverb and quickly enabling you to play on top of that repeating blanket of sound is a lot of fun.
The delay and reverb are the biggest effects on Ghost, creating most of the magic, but there’s a nice supporting cast of other effects here, too The selectable HP/LP, BP, or Comb Filter with Resonance control is versatile and quick to use, and the Distortion (with a Tone control for taming the high-end, post-distortion) adds some nice crunch to a signal, and along with the guitar cab simulator, added flexibility to an electric guitar. I’m not sure I’d give up your Kemper (or whatever) amp simulator just yet, but maybe…The Bitcrushing is also a very cool addition, and combinations of all the various effects—as it was with the module version—is a treasure trove of sound sculpting tools. Add in some easily assignable onboard LFO/envelope following modulation (with control over Shape and Speed), for any/all the parameters, and six different routing possibilities to choose the path of the effects that you want to feed your signal through, and you’ve got a ton at your foot/finger tips. As for those feet/fingers, three easily pressed footswitches (Preset/Save, Bypass/Load, Taps/Assign) are found at the bottom of Ghost to turn things on and off, save/recall, etc.
Every parameter on Ghost has an accompanying LED to show the level strength, lighting up blue for the main parameter and positive modulation amount (when bi-polar voltage is available), and red for the alternate parameter and negative modulation. Switching from the main to the alternate parameters is easily reached by pressing the Shift button, which can be momentarily held for quick changes, or latched to stay in the alternate mode. This is super fast and easy to do, and the LEDs do a good job of keeping track of levels and real-time action of the modulation, and makes Ghost easy to configure and read—there’s no guesswork here—and going from state to state or parameter to parameter really couldn’t be easier. A small nine-LED grid at the bottom does the same for signifying preset information.
Right off the bat when comparing the two versions, the biggest difference between the Ghost Pedal and its Eurorack counterpart is that there are no CV inputs for modulation on the pedal. Still, there is still plenty of opportunity for modulation control. Ghost is MIDI capable, and any parameter can be controlled by that, along with—naturally—using your hands or feet. There’s also the onboard modulation and the option for using an expression pedal to enable some morphing from state to state—something you can’t do on the module version without some additional help and a bit more hassle. The expression pedal morphing is a true star, where you can go from a small change like a delay time change with the push of the pedal, to changing everything completely—going from something like a reverb heavy saturated delay effect to a bitcrushed filtered squirm of a sound. Whatever two settings you can think of, you can morph between them with an expression pedal, and setup for this is easy. If you have two saved presets you like, you can morph from one to the other, and depending on the settings and all that, the in-between interpolations between the two settings can be bizarre and priceless. This really is such a cool feature.
While the Euro version sports a compressor and sidechain control, neither is found on Ghost Pedal. This seems like it’d be a bit of a bummer, but I can’t say I missed or needed it in this configuration, and if you’re using it as more of a desktop controller and using MIDI with it, there’s a good chance your computer is nearby, and adding compression in that realm is more flexible than a pedal would be, anyway.
I was surprised how much the different form factors between the two Ghosts resulted in different musical output—it is one of my key takeaways from having spent much time with both—and a different experience overall. I played Ghost Pedal like an instrument at times, but also as a set-and-forget effect, too. I noticed that because of the size and space, I spent more time honing in on a sound or feel than when I used the modular version. And I found Ghost worked just as well for guitar as for modular/synth and was also great on a recorded drum track and vocals, too. On vocals, with a little freeze loop going and some delay, I modulated the filter cutoff with the resonance cranked and got some pretty cool wah vox out of it. Setting the delay in loop mode on top of this and the cacophony of voices reached Meredith Monk-like proportions. In another instance, attempting to simulate the huge reverb of an enormous airplane hangar for a modular drum track, with a touch of delay and bitcrushing, produced some interesting results, perfect for adding underneath a parallel compressed clean version of the same track to add girth.
There are a couple of things I wish were a bit easier. In order to clear the delay buffer (necessary at times for longer delays) you need to turn both the Time and Repeat knob fully CCW, which resets those controls. A long button press or button combo would work better, so you wouldn’t need to get those two controls back to the desired position, especially if you’re using Ghost with your feet. Also, the Tap settings for the Delay take a little getting used to. Once you choose your Tap setting (Shift + Tap) the Tap button blinks one to four times to signify mode, but after that (don’t miss it!) there’s no visual indicator of what mode you’re in and sometimes it can be hard to tell (especially at a quick glance) if Tap is engaged or not. This became less of an issue the more familiar I became with Ghost Pedal.
Those small things aside, I gotta say that Ghost Pedal delivers. I’m not surprised at all by the quality of the effects, I would have expected nothing less, but I think Endorphin.es have done a great job all around, especially holding back—putting just what’s needed into the pedal without overdoing it—making it easy and enjoyable to use. The effects available, and the breadth of each is impressive; you sure do get a lot from a little here (in terms of controls for each), and the way the effects play with each other—easily heard by changing the routing—can be surprising and drastic, fun to experiment with. Ghost Pedal won’t be disappearing from pedal boards and desktops anytime soon; it’s an apparition that is going to stick around for a while.

Price: $519

endorphin.es