8-Bit Sub-Octave Down · One-off prototype
Cronch-u-lator
Cronch-u-lator runs Parasit Studio's 8-Bitar - a glitchy, gated 8-bit sub-octave-down - with one knob for Volume/Level and a shudder-y videogame-in-your-amp voice. Pale pastel blue, with the name hand-lettered in green marker, because I wanted it to look like something a fifth-grader would make and hide under their bed. The circuit tracks messy. That's the whole point. It shudders in and out below your note like an arcade cabinet with a bad power supply.
- Type8-bit sub-octave-down
- ControlsVolume / Level (single knob)
- CircuitParasit Studio 8-Bitar
- Enclosure125B
- Weight~8 oz
- Power9V DC, center-negative
- BuiltJul 2026
- StatusAvailable - one of a kind
What it does
Cronch-u-lator is a sub-octave shifter that sounds like your amp swallowed a Game Boy. The Parasit Studio 8-Bitar circuit at its heart pitch-shifts your signal down an octave, then re-samples it at low bit-depth for that classic chip-tune crunch. It doesn't track cleanly - the octave-down is gated and glitchy, cutting in and out around single notes and doing weird things on chords. One knob (Volume) sets how loud the whole cursed thing sits against your dry rig.
Especially fun paired with distortion or fuzz after it - the octave-down is thick enough to feed a full doom-bass tone from a regular guitar. Also great on its own for chip-tune lead voices and general video-game-in-a-toaster texture.
Demo
Demo video coming soon.
Controls
- Volume / Level
- Sets the pedal's output level. The 8-bit voice itself is fixed and full-throat; this just sets how loud that voice sits against your dry rig.
Circuit: Parasit Studio 8-Bitar - a glitchy 8-bit sub-octave-down. Built, painted, and finished by Onion Madder as an original one-off - not affiliated with, endorsed by, or a clone of any commercial brand.