DropTune
MorPHeus
BY BRIAn BARR
PRODUCT REVIEW
orpheus
ropTune™
ves your
uitar instant
olyphonic
www.premierguitar.com
op tuning
½-step
ecrements
p to 3½
eps —
us full
ctave and
ctaver.
Now you can go from one pitch for a particular song to
a different pitch on the next without having to retune your guitar or
owning two, three or more guitars
for various step-down de-tunings.
For example, play an E chord
in standard tuning, then use this
unique pedal to drop tune your
guitar so the chord is changed to
an E;, D, D;, C, B, or B ;.
Metal guitarists can get that
heavy drop-tuned tone at different pitches without dealing with
floppy string
buzz, extra-heavy-gauge strings
or expensive extra guitars. The
same goes for acoustic guitars,
and acoustic or electric violins.
If your singer has a bad throat
night, you can drop-tune y
Growing up in the early ‘90s my guitar heroes
were Jerry Cantrell (Alice in Chains), Kim Thayil
(Soundgarden), Adam Jones (Tool) and Justin
Broadrick (Godflesh), so it’s no accident that I
began experimenting with drop tuning early
on. I’ve run the gamut when it comes to lower
tuning, having owned an Ibanez 7-string and a
6-string baritone in the past. When I was asked
to check out the Morpheus Drop Tune, I was
excited but skeptical. After watching the com-
pany’s NAMM demo my expectations were
high. Questions, concerns, ideas began swirling
in my brain. Could I finally put lighter gauge
strings on my guitars and let the Morpheus
Drop Tune do all the work? The Morpheus
Drop Tune is a polyphonic pitch drop pedal
that allows the player to drop up to 3-1/2
steps in half step decrements. An Instrument
tuned to E can be tuned down to Eb, D, Db,
C B, Bb, or A. What separates this pedal from
the rest of the pack is that with the Drop Tune
you can play not only single notes, but full
chords. There are also two Octave effects, one
to drop the instrument down to a full octave,
and an octaver that blends your original note
and the octave note together. The Drop Tune
comes housed in a slick silver-and-black metal
chassis with 3 footswitches and a large easy-
to-read display. Also provided is an Input, Line
Out, Trim Level and a Mini USB for firmware
updates—all powered by an included 12V
DC adapter. Before going into detail on the
features, I must add that the power adapter
is small, taking up only one space on a power
conditioner, which is refreshing, because power
supply real estate is important.
The footswitch features are (from left to
right): Down, Up and On/Off. The Down
switch allows the player to move down in
steps whether the unit is on or off. The Up
switch only allows you to step up when the
effect is off, but it doubles as a toggle switch
when the effect is on to allow the user to
toggle back and forth between the effect On/
Off—a red LED indicates when the effect is
On. The rear-panel Trim Level knob allows
you to adjust the line level input of the guitar,
which you can also track by the input level
meter on the pedal.
How’s That Drop?
Plugging in to the Drop Tune for the first time,
I ran directly into my pedalboard from the
output of the Drop Tune. Adjusting my line
level, I first listened for any comparable sound
difference between running the pedal in my
signal chain and not running it. Although
this pedal is true bypass, the guitar’s signal
is being processed digitally, which can be a
hard pill to swallow for analog enthusiasts. The
pedal is very transparent and doesn’t seem to
color the tone in any way. Clicking the effect
on, I began with the first half step down, playing an open E chord in clean. I noticed immediately how well the Drop Tune tracked the
notes of the chord I played. As we say in the
digital music world, there was very little latency, which didn’t affect my timing when playing
through the Drop Tune. With the initial test out
of the way I began my descent. When I made
it to two-and-half steps down there was a bit
of warble when notes were sustained. This is
also where my tone began to sound processed
when playing full chords—a little disappointing
at first blush, but to be fair I had to really listen
for it, and it only seemed really noticeable
while in clean.
The warble disappeared when I switched to
distortion, especially at louder volumes. That
