Source Audio Aftershock

As you might have already guessed, my usual preference for a drive pedal is analog circuits. The moment I’m writing this, the only digital pedal in the Jounal is the HX Stomp and I did not like the drive tones of that one bit. Time to explore a bit more in the world of ones and zeros, just to see where we’re at.

Source Audio goes an interesting way with their Series One Pedals. It is a series of digital multi effects, but each is dedicated to one thing only. The C4 does synth, the Spectrum does filtering, the Atlas does compression […] and the Aftershock does dirt. That means it cannot be a pedal that fits in the “Jack of all trades, master of none” box. It must be really good at doing dirt, else there is no point.

Having past experience with the C4, I can tell you that you get a few options to work with this.
You can download the software to your computer or smart device, hook the pedal up via USB and get a sandbox to play around with, shaping your drive sound like you want. The features are rich and complex, and that might be a bit over the top. For those that are not that much into the deep end of the pool, there is a shallow area, too. You can browse and download a large library of user created patches and play around with them. The Aftershock can also load any presets created for the Kingmaker Fuzz or the LA Lady Overdrive. The Pedal by itself will get you access to six presets. You get a three way toggle switch to access the first three, and if you hold down the footswitch for several seconds, the LED changes from green to red and the toggle selects between the other three. If you have a MIDI environment, you might need additional hardware (the NEURO HUB) to connect the pedal, but when it’s hooked up, you get access to the presets without bending down and flipping a switch. On top, you can assign expression pedal(s) to many parameters.
The C4 gives you access to 128 presets when hooked up via MIDI, so I was a bit stunned that the Aftershock is only capable of 6 – but after some consideration I came to the conclusion that six dirt sounds is probably enough for most people. If the Aftershock only replaced two pedals on your board, you’d already be saving on real estate and money (given that it replaces two pedals that are worth more than a single Aftershock).
There are four knobs on the pedal, labeled Drive, Level, Clean and Tone. The latter two can be assigned to any parameter you want to influence via the software, many patches make use of that and provide a two band EQ instead of Clean and Tone.
The easiest way to explore the possibilities of the pedal is to browse some user created patches, download them and try them out for yourself. If you find something you really like, you can look at the patch in the editor to figure out how it’s done and you might also start modifying it to learn how things work – it’s a better start than from scratch. You can hook up the pedal to your computer and influence the settings in real time while playing, which is also quite useful. I could bore you more with details of the inner workings, but for now – enough of the tech talk.

The pedal itself has a decent build quality. You can choose between buffered or relay controlled true bypass.

All this is useless if the pedal does not sound and feel right. I have enjoyed a great many drive pedals and learned a few things along the way – and I’m not entirely ignorant when it comes to audio signals in general, but I would not call myself an expert on the topic. I see myself more as a gourmand than a cook. I’m a simple guy. I plug it in, I hit a note and twist the knobs a little. If it the sound gets better, I’m happy. If the sound gets worse, I’m not.
Since I acquired the Aftershock second hand, I performed a factory reset one minute after trying it out – the owner before me seemed to have a taste for heavy distortion with a metallic clank, all the presets seemed to be a variation of that topic. The basic patches did not really impress me that much, so I loaded up the Neuro software on the laptop and hooked up the USB cable.
Digging through the presets available on the Neuro app for my laptop, I found there are less than for the C4. Not wanting to dive deep into the whole thing yet (and also lacking the time for it), I did toy around with some presets. I found a Green Rhino, a quite credible SVT, and two different Doom2 versions, so there’s something to compare with the real world counterparts. I have no SVT at home, but I’ve played that amp and a ton of pedals and preamps that copied that sound, so I go by ear and memory on that front, while I can compare the Green Rhino and Doom2 presets to the original flavor.
And here’s where that route leads to a problem: You obviously cannot set up the Aftershock to completely emulate every single nuance of those pedals and those patches are user created. I assume the users either used the original pedal in their favorite settings or they copied the sound of a bass they knew was using that particular effect. However, when you’re loading in the Doom2 patch, you don’t get a Doom2 pedal with all its functions, but you get something that could be called a snapshot of one Doom2 in one particular setting – and when you start to twist the knobs, you move away from that. Comparing the Doom2 patches with the Doom2, one other thing became instantly apparent: I personally use the Doom2 because my playing dynamics leave the pedal intact, and I can use that to trigger the envelope, much like the Meatball or the Brown Dog and Agent 00Funk combinations can do. This (obviously?) does not work with the Aftershock. The signal gets compressed massively and the envelope filter opens the same amount, no matter how hard I hit the strings. Also, there is some weird artifact in the sound when you let a note ring out completely. I thought this has to do with the noisegate, but even when switching that off, some of it remains. You probably need good headphones to make it out – and it won’t happen too often that you let a note decay for that long, but it’s there.
The Green Rhino was completely off. I could not really bring the patch and the original pedal sound alike – but have to mention yet again that this is a user created patch that might faithfully reproduce what that particular user is getting out of their Green Rhino while it cannot recreate what I’m doing with mine.
However, what I really like is the idea behind all this – give the users a sandbox in which they can play and let them upload their ideas into a library for others to download, modify and rate, so you can sort the patches by popularity and see which ones are mainstream and which ones are obscure.
Clicking on a patch instantly activates it and pulls it up in the editor, so you can look at all the settings. It might be a good idea to use a looper and let a lick run on repeat to have your hands free to explore and tweak.
This is both a blessing and a curse – the Idea behind the thing is great, yet the implementation of it leaves some things to be desired. Browsing the library, I felt a bit sobered. I could not find a single preset that I liked enough in a mix to use it without further tweaks, and the software that does the tweaking is, in a word, quite clumsy and does not really feel intuitive.
I must admit that working on a dirt sound quickly became a frustrating experience and felt like a chore,
so much so that I did actually abandon it to do something else, and the pedal got slowly pushed off to the side, then went on the shelf, then back in the box it came in, where it still is.

My thesis is this: For me, to dive headfirst into a thing such as this, there must be a “WOW” moment early on that kindles the flame and gives me enough momentum to climb the first bit of the learning curve. An easy one would have been great presets that show off the capability of the unit that make me want to use them, but also explore deeper, but as I wrote, I found them underwhelming. Couple that with the unlucky circumstance that I have prior experience with a similar looking pedal, the C4, which has a lot more functionality under the hood and I was a bit disappointed to find that the Aftershock has less presets to save and less knobs to assign to functions, it was just not enough to make me overcome the hurdles the Aftershock puts between me and a great dirt sound.
I officially gave up on that and abandoned the idea to bond with this device in any meaningful way.