Endorphin.es' Golden Master Pedal is the ultimate Stereo Channel Strip Studio-style End-of-Chain Tone Mastering Utility

The Golden Master Pedal has been somewhat overshadowed by its bigger and somewhat fancier Ghost Pedal sibling - while it really does warrant some significant consideration of its own. Where it essentially combines Stereo Widening with Left & Right Channel Compression and Left & Right 3-Band EQ - with some really clever onboard smarts which allow you to control those parameters with the minimum of fuss - and through the least amount of controls. With further smart touches - including 3 onboard presets and an Expression-port sidechain also present.

The 3-Band EQ and Stereo Widening features are fairly straightforward to understand - while there is still a degree of black box science about the Widening - as we don’t know exactly that the frequency clusters are - but presumably along similar lines to the very transparently understood EQ / tone stack - which sets out exactly which bands you have control over and to what extent (-20dB to +8dB per Band).

The Compression though is where the really clever stuff is happening - as you have just single-knob control per band - but some smart internal algorithm is varying the degree of Attack, Release, Ratio and Threshold - while you set how little or much compression you want per each of the 3 provided brands. Again - like the Stereo Widening - those exact frequency bands are not fully documented - but surely along similar lines to the EQ.

This is quite obviously a killer Studio Style Weapon of Mass Production! Which stands in as a kind of ’Fairy Dust’ Mastering tool to enhance your Stereo Output. Obviously only good for Stereo Rigs - so won’t be of interest to those myriad Mono rig types - but particularly interesting for Stereo advocates like me - and I would Imagine Synth specialists in particular.

This is very much an output enhancer - to sit at the end of your chain to balance and optimise your stereo output - and to add some magical touches exactly where they are needed. I certainly see the appeal here - while this pedal is not necessarily universally applicable - but when deployed smartly can really tidy up and improve your signature tone output. I can see uses both within a Studio environment - and on the road - it’s really a very clever utility - and particularly how it semi-automatically manipulates the key compression parameters.

Controls - VU IN (OUT) [VU meter source], VOLUME/mix, THRESHOLD, INPUT GAIN, LOW BAND, MID BAND, HIGH BAND, MODE : m/side (stereo widening) / comp / eq, MUTE LOW (hold to enable), MUTE MID (hold to enable), MUTE HIGH (hold to enable), BYPASS FOOTSWITCH/preset load, hold to save/PRESET FOOTSWITCH.

STEREO WIDENING

[m/side] : shape Stereo Output per LOW, MID, and HIGH Band. For instance narrow / centre LOW frequencies - which tend to be more of a Mono reverberation - but then widen the HIGH frequencies to give you that extended stereo spread which broadens the feel of the output.

COMPRESSION

Multi-Band Compression essentially - where you can select degree of compression on each of the 3 LOW, MID and HIGH Bands (Soft > Normal > Heavy) - individual across the separate Left & Right output channel. The exact bands / clusters being compressed are not revealed - but obviously some degree of fine-tuning occurred in the development process to ensure maximum impact on those 3 dials.

The Golden Master has Six Compressors for each stereo pair ; LOW, MID and HIGH bands running at the same time.

The compressor settings are tuned for each band separately and are morphed between each other, however the generic settings are as following:

• ATTACK : 50 mSec (CCW) to 14 mSec (CW) 
• RELEASE : 1500 mSec (CCW) to 150 mSec (CW)
• RATIO : 1:1.25 (CCW) to 1:4 (CW)
• THRESHOLD : -12db (CCW) to -20db (CW)

You can adjust Global Threshold via that knob - for more extreme compression.

3-BAND EQ

• LOWS @ 20Hz > 300Hz
• MIDS @ 300Hz > 3kHz
• HIGHS @ 3kHz > 20kHz - all at approximately -20dB > +8dB

Frequency Focus examples :

LOW BAND : bass guitar, kick drum, bass synth
MID BAND : guitar, synthesizers, toms
HIGH BAND : hi-hats, percussion