Why this way?
Why we built it this way
We’ve been buying pedals for decades, and we love stereo time-based effects. Our ears hear echoes and reverb in stereo, and a mono version just isn’t the same. But guitars mostly play in mono, so Keystone pedals work in both.
What bothered us about the stereo pedals we love was never the sound. It was the dual-mono cabling, the lack of tempo awareness and remote control, and the limited expression options, if there were any at all.
So we asked: what if you could get great creative effects and move the standard for stompboxes forward, at an affordable price? There’s been a lot of innovation in pedal software and much less in pedal hardware. We wanted to change that.
We designed the hardware to cut weight and cost and to put control in the player’s hands, by questioning a few basic assumptions about what a stompbox is.
Why choose stereo or mono with TS or TRS cables?
It cuts the cabling for stereo in half. That means less money spent on things that don’t make music, less weight to carry, fewer parts, and less to troubleshoot. (Setup details are on our Mono/Stereo Setup page.)
Why two footswitches?
Because we can use them. The second switch might expose a secondary effect like Freeze on our plate reverb, or run a second independent effect with routing set by the toggles, as on the Kascade Echo/Bender. It can tap tempo on the Kontinuum delay, act as a momentary switch while the other latches the effect on the Kuttor Slice Shaper, or set the speed on the Karousel Rotary/Drive. A second footswitch means more creative possibility.
Why six knobs?
When so many great multi-fx units exist, the best reason to buy a stompbox is immediate, precise, live control over one effect, which can become 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 full control over what your tremolo or filter is doing, how your delays are EQ’d, and how deep your echo bending goes.
We love multi-fx, but we hate menu diving. If you want to change the sound and stay in the flow, you need a knob, a toggle, or an expression pedal. That’s where stompboxes with lots of knobs excel.
But I like apps!
Our pedals also connect to our free app, Keystone Control Center. If you’d rather use a keyboard and mouse than your fingers, be our guest. The app is especially fun for building your own APEX assignments, so the expression pedal does something cool, and saving them to the pedal.
We designed it so you use the app when you’re making presets and the knobs and switches when you’re playing. Our goal is never to interrupt your creative flow.
Why MIDI in and thru?
We want delays and other time-based effects locked to one tempo, especially when there’s more than one on the board. Tapping tempo on each is one way. A better way is external MIDI clock from a drum machine or click.
Most pedals are a MIDI dead end. They might take MIDI in, but rarely out or thru. So we added MIDI thru: each pedal passes the tempo and any MIDI CC/PC messages on to the next one. (Keystone pedals are receivers, not controllers, so there’s no MIDI out.)
Plenty of great pedals and other gear can send full MIDI program changes. Every Keystone parameter has its own unique address, so a single MIDI command can change your whole board. All of this works over USB too.
Why APEX?
Synth players get complex expression and automation. Guitarists mostly don’t. We think it’s time guitarists had more dynamic control over their effects, including advanced routing and complex relationships between parameters.
APEX (Assignable Parameter Expression) is the start of that. You can map any knob to the expression pedal, across its full range or a portion of it, in normal or inverse.
