Keystone Stompbox Connection and Layout
We've been buying pedals for decades, and love stereo time-based effects. (That's how our ears hear echoes and reverb, in stereo. A mono version is just not the same, but that's what guitars play -- mostly in mono. We support mono effects and work in mono as well as stereo.)
The problem with all the stereo stompboxes we love isn't their sound, it's all the dual mono cabling. The lack of tempo awareness or remote addressability. The limited options for expression, if any.
So we thought: what if you could make great creative effects, but also advance the standards on stompboxes for musicians, at a price that's affordable? How much I/O you could expect from a compact stompbox that isn't buried in patch cables? There's so much innovation in pedal software, much less in pedal hardware. Let's try to change that.
Keystone realized that we use could design the hardware for these fantastic effects to cut the weight, the cost, and give ultimate control to the players by changing some of the fundamental assumptions around stompboxes.
Why stereo or mono selectable using TS or TRS patch cables? Firstly, it cuts the cabling in half for stereo. That's less money being spent on stuff that doesn't make music. It's less weight to carry around. Fewer parts. Less to troubleshoot.
Why two footswitches? We can use it! Expose a secondary effect like Freeze on our Plate Reverb on the same pedal, or make two independent effects and offer routing thru the toggles, like the Kascade Echo Bender. The second footswitch can be for tapping tempo on a Kontinuum delay, or a momentary switch while the other latches an effect like Kuttor Slice Shaper. It can be the speed control on a Karousel Rotary Drive. A second footswitch adds more creative possibility.
Why six knobs? We believe the coolest reason to buy a stompbox-style pedal (when so many great multi-fx options exist) is that it uniquely offers extreme, immediate, live play precision over a single effect -- which can sometimes be the basis of a player's style. (We also believe one great effect can change the world and already has, many times.) You should have maximum control over what your tremolo or filters are doing, or how your delays are EQ'd, or how deep your echobending goes. And while we love multi-fx, we hate menu diving. If you want to change the sound but stay in the flow, you need a knob, or a toggle, or an expression pedal. This is where stompboxes with lots of knobs excel.
But I like apps! Our pedals also connect to our free app Keystone Control Center, and if you want to control your pedals with a keyboard and mouse rather than your fingers, be our guest! (The app is especially fun for making your own APEX assignments so the expression pedal does cool things, and then saving them to the pedal for later use.) But it's designed so that you can use the app when it's time for making presets, and use the knobs and switches and immediacy of a stompbox when you're playing. Our design goal is to never interrupt your creative flow.
Why MIDI in and thru? We want our delays and other time-based effects tempo synced, especially if there is more than one of them on our board. So, one way to accomplish that (rather than tapping tempo) is via external MIDI from a drum machine or click, But then most pedals are a MIDI dead end -- they might take MIDI in, but very rarely out or thru. We decided to add MIDI thru to these pedals, so each pedal repeats the tempo or MIDI CC/PC, to the next time-based effect. (Keystone stomps are not a MIDI controller, no MIDI out, they're merely receivers of MIDI.) But a ton of great options -- pedals and otherwise -- exist out there to send entire MIDI program changes, and every Keystone pedal has unique addresses for each parameter, so you can change the entire board with a single MIDI command. Oh yeah and this all works over USB too.
Why APEX? One of the things synth players get that guitarists generally aren't offered is complex expression and automation possibilities with their effects. We believe it's time guitarists had more dynamic control over effects -- advanced routing, complex relationships. APEX (Assignable Parameter Expression) is the beginning of our efforts to change that. You can map any and every knob, in full or a range, normal or inverse, to the expression pedal.
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