Vorp FX

The Astronaut is in fact the Chasm Reverb by deadastronautfx, assembled by myself and put in a box of my own design. It's a particularly nice ambient-ish reverb that can go into self-oscillation or just pleasantly hold atmospheric tones for long periods of time. It's pretty unique in what it does, and it's perfect for the ambient guitar music I'm playing. The knobs set the overall output level, the mix of wet and dry signal, oscillation on/off, signal damping (a low pass filter), and the length of the reverb decay. The combination of the Damp and Decay settings heavily affects if and how the signal will go into self-oscillation. No battery operation; requires a 9V DC power supply.

PEDALS MADE: 3
CURRENT STATUS: NOT AVAILABLE
FUTURE AVAILABILITY: only if I decide to sell mine

it's a really great sounding reverb pedal. It's based on the Belton brick, but doesn't sound like it because it uses a clever architecture and self-oscillation to extend the reverb trail to impressive lengths. Think Brian Eno's Apollo, and you get a good picture of just how atmospheric it is. Or check out Deadastronaut's demo video.

Deadastronaut sells the PCB for this pedal so that everybody with a lust for adventure and a soldering iron can build their own. I made three versions of this which differ only in the knob layout, plus 8 months/five years more soldering experience. Especially the latter really paid off - compared to building the first one, the second one was finished quickly and painlessly, without any need for troubleshooting. The third one had a problem on the PCB, which I detected quickly and was easily able to fix.

The First Astronaut (July 1, 2019)

Building the first one was something of a journey. First I wanted a different knob layout, then I decided to just go with PCB-mounted pots as suggested, then I found that the holes I had drilled in the enclosure didn't fit because my printout of the drill template didn't have the correct spacing, so I had to use wire connections anyway, then one of those connections was bad and I didn't get a dry signal at first... ah, the joys of DIY pedal building! But everything was fixed in the end and I happily used this reverb on my board until I built the second one. The picture above shows the pedal with the knobs that I used orginally; as they were quite tight together, I later swapped those for taller, thinner ones that were easier to manipulate. The picture below shows the pedal with the new knobs.

The Second Astronaut (March 7, 2020)

I had become a bit unhappy with the knob layout of the first Astronaut, which I felt was inconsistent with my other pedals, so I sold my first one and built this second one that looked nicer and was also much easier to manipulate.

The Third Astronaut (April 22, 2024)

I thought I'd moved on to other reverbs, so when I hadn't used the second astronaut in a while and someone asked if they could have it, I sold it to them. A few months later and I wanted that sound again. Thankfully, I had a spare PCB and all the components, so I populated the PCB, and then other things happened that kept me from finishing it. Also I wanted to move away from my classic astronaut icon design and try something wilder but couldn't find a drawing I liked. A few years later, and after having finished the Ampère fuzz, I returned to it and started looking for astronaut drawings again. I fould this amazing artwork by Asheeq, which I used for this unique pedal, which I don't intend to sell.