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Nick Rambo

Spaced Out: Exploring Blackhole with Eventide's Christian Colabelli

The new Blackhole pedal from Eventide is a universe within a universe.


And no, that’s not marketing-speak — it’s how Eventide product manager Christian Colabelli describes where the pedal fits into the company’s ever-expanding product line.


“The H9 is the Multiverse that offers a seemingly infinite amount of sonic possibilities,” he explains. “The user has every TimeFactor, ModFactor, PitchFactor, SPACE and inherent H9 algorithm on tap to explore endlessly and with an extraordinary amount of flexibility available. The Blackhole, by contrast, is a singular universe that offers a vast array of sounds and is the gateway galaxy to SPACE and H9.”

Obviously, leaning into cosmic puns isn’t something to shy away from here, but the bottom line is that the Blackhole is a smaller form factor pedal that sounds fantastic, is easy to tweak and can fit onto almost any pedalboard.

And the best thing about it? Heavy Darth Vader vibes.

“The Blackhole is a quintessential Eventide algorithm,” Colabelli says. “It has a characteristic sound and has been one of our most popular algorithms since its inception. It’s utilized by a wide breadth of players and has appeared on countless recordings — and we’ve received a plethora of requests from artists and users alike to make this algorithm into a standalone pedal. Thus, the decision to move forward and make this request come to fruition was somewhat of a no-brainer.”

According to Colabelli, the goal with Blackhole was to provide a compact, stripped down, easy-to-use, versatile pedal that would appeal to a wider variety of players — and do so at a considerably lower price-point.

“This pedal is for the player that may not necessarily be familiar with our brand and can potentially be overwhelmed by the vast, and perhaps daunting ocean of depth that the SPACE and H9 offer.”

As such, the BlackHole — with its tangible, six-knob, hands-on approach — has a more moderate learning curve.

“It’s an entirely different user experience,” Colabelli says. “Interestingly, some of my Beta Testers — who are seasoned Eventide Users — have mentioned that this new standalone unit has made them approach the algorithm from a completely different standpoint, thus allowing them to discover new sonic territory. In my opinion, many users overlook just how versatile a single Eventide algorithm is. Breaking one out into a standalone format makes this much easier to realize.”

Of course, for those wanting a deeper dive, Blackhole is compatible with Eventide Device Manager (a software-based editor) via USB, unlocking parameter and preset management in the digital realm.

And Colabelli expects the new format to become a new standard for Eventide in the future.


“This format will most definitely be used to break other algorithms out of their original confines,” he says. “As I said earlier, we’ve had an overwhelming amount of requests from both artists and users to make certain algorithms into standalone units, and we will continue to develop this form factor into a family of pedals based on the same principles: stripped down, easy-to-use, affordable, compact/small footprint.”

Fingers crossed for a PitchFuzz standalone.


 
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