David Rainger's Rainger FX Delivers Yet Another Genius Pedal Innovation - the Snare Trap Dynamic Beatbox

I actually see this as an evolution and refinement of the Dedalo FX Beat from Winter NAMM 2020. Of course there is a lot more to the Snare Trap - but the core concept is roughly the same - where you tap in different percussion sounds / voicings to create a beat. I was actually waiting for an official manual to materialise for the Snare Trap in order to gain further insights, but none such seems to be materialising any time soon - so it was now as good as ever.

There are several parameters, automations, syncing and filters on the Snare Trap - to make for a really fantastic dynamic and fully controllable drum machine. The tap mechanism here is a sort of an electronic drum pad where you structure your beats and fills - and then fine tune and enhance with various additional controls and features including a Snare Delay section, various Drum Voicings/Shapes/Sounds - including White Noise and Pseudo-Hand-Claps, then Time Signatures / Tap Tempo, LFO and Low Pass Filter. You can also set fine-tune the mix of Beats to Instrument input.

Controls are : Snare : Shape | Dry | Hi-Hat 4s : On/Off, Bass Drum 2 : Late, Snare Delay : Send, Rate, Feedback, Volume, Instrument Side Chain, Beats On LED, 4s LED, LFO LED, Mix : Beats > Instrument, Pad : Tap Tempo / Fill, LFO Rate Level | On/Off, Cut OFF (Low Pass Filter) : Lo > Hi, Drum Pad. You also have CV input triggers for each of Bass Drum, Snare Drum and Hi-Hat.

I don’t feel any of the demos to date really are perfect guides to getting started necessarily - while they do demonstrate the range of the Snare Trap quite well. And it’s fantastic how easy it is to ’program’ a beat and then manipulate with the various controls. I feel the desktop keyboard guys will probably get the most use out of this - in particularly doing the on-the-fly tweaking. While that’s quite a lot more tricky to accomplish as a floor-based stompbox - so for sure this will align somewhat more to desktop tweakers!

Conceptually I really love this pedal - while it’s not quite perfect in being a Mono Device and slightly over-sized in dimensions - roughly an inch longer / 25mm more in both directions versus a standard 1590-BB style enclosure. My pedal-chain is currently so congested that I would really struggle to fit this in - I’m literally down to millimetres of leeway/clearance now. I am still entertaining getting one of these in for a run on the #34 slot - which is the only suitable place for it really. It will certainly happen at some stage - while I’ve yet to assign a priority to it.

The Snare Trap is an analogue/digital hybrid, and creates the sounds itself internally – no pre-recorded samples. With the tap tempo, delay, and the white noise part of the snare and hi-hat all being digital, the bass drum, shaping of the snare and hi-hat, the low-pass filter and side-chain circuit are all analogue.

The Snare Trap is available from several leading retailers already, and of course direct from the Rainger FX Webstore - with a price tag of £275 equivalent.