The Minidrone is a stripped-down version of the Drone Rainger. It’s really fun to play over, and is a great foundation for improvisation, songwriting and dramatic live performance.
It’s a deep and huge analogue synth, with modulation, made of up to three low-pitched triangle-wave oscillators mixed together.
Two of these oscillators are always in unison whatever the pitch - this is Drone 1 - though very slightly out-of-tune with each other. This creates ‘beats’ between them, a slow, wide-band modulation that keeps the drone very listenable. The pitch is controlled by ‘Pitch1’.
Add in the other tone generator - Drone2 - and you can make any kind of musical interval between the drones; major and minor thirds, a fifth, octaves, or thick unison.
And all points in between - including tasty discordant chords, modulating fast and strangely…
Drone1 and Drone2 are fully independently tuneable - with sweepable knobs - by tuner, or by ear (low volume is recommended for accuracy), with a range of approximately two octaves.
Igor
It comes with an Igor controller - a small pressure sensitive pad - which, when pressed, drops the overall pitch down a tone (two frets), rising back up on release. This creates a darkly atmospheric starting point for writing songs, riffs, or improvising…
Press the ‘1/2Tone’ switch and this drop-down becomes only a semitone.
These two drop-down options actually make the pedal work in every kind of musical mode - dark and sinister, or happy up-beat ones, weird minor ones, blissed-out ones… the Minidrone is very musical and inspiring to play over.
Low end
There’s tons of bass - 70Hz down to 30Hz (approximately) is the fundamental note from Drone1, which has chorusing harmonics, but with Drone2 added there’s all kinds of tones and ‘beats’; the sound is deep and electro…
It’s like hitting a low note on some big-ass old synth (Korg MS-20? Yamaha CS-80??) and bending it…!
But in Rainger FX minipedal format (our custom enclosure).
The Minidrone is true bypass, and loud.
It’s an electric tamboura!
In a two-piece band it’s your low-end!
Through a window in the front panel you can see a motel scene inside - with car parks leading onto a busy road. There’s an eerie streetlamp glow - and the motel sign flashes whenever you press the Igor pad.
Using it
You mix the drones in with your clean guitar signal, which passes through the pedal - buffered, but unaffected. The pedal can be a handy boost when you turn off the drones volume - great for a solo-type signal bump.
It’s designed to be used in series with other pedals (try a delay pedal after it), all plugged into a single guitar amp input.