Animal Factory’s Pit Viper was born as a guitar pedal before being redesigned from the ground up for release as a Eurorack module. An overdrive/state-variable EQ, this is the second version of the Pit Viper and gone are the first incarnation’s reptilian controls and diabolical looking snake, replaced with a friendlier geometric design. I have to admit that I miss the deviant green LED eyes of the previous version, but there is an elegance to the new design, and it’s just as full of dirt, grit, and venom as the initial incarnation.
Pit Viper takes your input signal and sends it into a 4-pole state-variable filter where each of the filters (LP, HP, BP) has an independent control so that you can have bits of each filter affecting the signal at the output, or just an LP, HP, or BP filter. It’s this filtering aspect that really differentiates Pit Viper from almost all other distortions out there as with the LP, HP, and BP controls you can fine tune the frequency and frequency range to sculpt the distortion you’re looking for. There are controls for DYN(amics), FREQ, Q, and FM, each of which have non-normalled CV inputs, so that they’re usable without any CV patched in, but become attenuators with a signal applied. This makes it so there’s a lot to modulate on Pit Viper, as well as tweak and fine tune the sound. For example, I was running a sequence into Pit Viper and just doing a cursory tweak of the FREQ and out of nowhere I got a sub version of my sequence to go along with the lead-line melody. This was using the Mix Out and with HP, LP, and BP cranked and the FREQ in center position. I guess with having the three filters at the output this shouldn’t be too much of a surprise, as I was inadvertently mixing in another peak, in this case a low frequency, into the output. In this way Pit Viper works as a dipole filter and I tried getting a tripole out of it—since we do have the three filters—and according to my trusty Mordax DATA I was successful, but the spread of the three poles were never far enough apart to hear all three peaks distinctly enough. Or my hearing is going. Could be. Even so, it's an impressive thing to be able to do with something that's billed as a distortion unit, and it makes for some fun exploration—both sound-wise and in terms of frequency exercises. I do wish, however, that each filter’s frequency could have its own modulation source so you could CV a fade in/out of the sub or the main melody or whatever and do tricky stuff like that.
As for the FREQ/Q behavior, it’s not hard to get Pit Viper to hiss (an asp, I mean, apt description) and get into a um…hissy fit, especially with a healthy dose of FM. Fully CW, the FM just added noise—totally useful—but I found that by backing off just a hair the FM added a definable grit to the sound and brought out Pit Viper’s truly venomous instincts. It’s pretty enjoyable to do a good ol’ filter sweep with the Q pumped up a bit, though the micro knobs (or whatever they’re called) do leave a bit to be desired in terms of the physicality of the sweeping gesture as it’s hard to be very dramatic with such small knobs.
With the Input and three outputs (Dry Out, Dist Out (pre-filter), and Mix Out) you’ve got a lot of patch possibilities and I like to send the Dist Out to a compressor and squash it as much as possible before bringing it in for some parallel drum processing. Pit Viper’s distortion, and control over the parameters means that I can layer my drum sounds to add some heft, and mix to taste and because of this I used PVII a lot on drums and it’s become a go-to module for this purpose.
I’ve been mostly talking about the filtering capabilities of Pit Viper, but in terms of distortion, PVII doesn’t disappoint. It can be smooth and mellow, adding just a little bite to your sound, though it really excels at full on dirt and grit, which is no surprise given Animal Factory’s proclivity for nasty distortion. Cranking the Gain and auditioning the Soft Clip, Hard Clip, and Mids (Mids controls the cutoff point for the filter) via the mini-toggles can bring a large variety of aforementioned grit and tonal possibilities, and opens up even more exploration of sound. There’s a Blend control for dialing in the right mix of wet/dry, and a main Volume control as well, which add to the overall functionality. I do have an issue with the toggles and placement of the Clips and Mids controls, as they’re hard to reach, sandwiched between the main knobs and being so small to begin with. I have normal-sized hands and fingers and it wasn’t easy to get my fingers in between the knobs for switching purposes, and if you’ve got large fingers you might need some sort of utensil, like a pen or pencil, to access them. There is room on the rest of the module to where they could have been spaced out for easier reach, and I do wonder why they were put where they were, but either way, you’ll have to maneuver your fingers into the snake pit of knobs to switch things up.
Pit Viper II is a pretty interesting module and it does things most other distortions don’t do. It’s multi-dimensional, with the variable combinations of the three filters at the output, and the options for tone sculpting, mixing, and distortion are pretty large. I do wish there was CV modulation for each filter type, and while I do like the new, friendlier and more streamlined look of the V2 module, I kinda miss the weirdness—the menacing green LED snake eyes, the snake-based feature name—of the first, slightly creepy incarnation of Pit Viper. Still, the more mainstream look doesn’t affect the capabilities of Pit Viper V2—it’s still as angry as before—and it’s a distortion module that might slither its way into your case.
Price: $299

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