Kikusui Electronics Industry Revives the Bixonic Brand with new Digital DREP Axentrix A1 take on the Expandora

It’s interesting that both the Expandora and Bixonic Brands have been separately revived fairly recently - while the Expandora brand / IP has already been bought out of course by an American consortium - meaning that the new Bixonic pedal could not use that Product name.

The Axentrix A1 is an incredibly modern extended-range take on the Expandora using some sort of new DREP (Dynamic Range Expressor Processing) Digital Signal Processing technology - in part conveyed by the new ’Accent’ Dynamic Range and Compression control.

There are so many cool features on this pedal - including the use of multiple multi-colour LED’s which also light up the position of where the dials are set. Each control has 2 or more functions, and all parameters can be saved to 3 different M1 - M3 Preset Memories. You further have a Bypass Switch on the side of the pedal - where you can select Buffered or True Bypass. And you can also make use of a Control Jack to further manipulate the pedal.

Controls - Gain / Hold for Gain Type : Crunch [Green LEDs - as pictured above] > Overdrive [Orange LEDs] > Distortion [Red LEDs] > Fuzz [Purple LED] / Bass EQ, Tone / Hold for EQ Mode / Mid EQ, Accent : Dynamic Range / Compression / Hold for LED Brightness, Level / Hold for Low Frequency Profile Mode : Guitar [Red Footswitch LED / Bass [Blue Footswitch LED], Save Preset Button, M1 Preset, M2 Preset, M3 Preset, Bypass Switch : Buffered [White Footswitch LED] / True Bypass.

So each knob is accentuated by LEDs, as is the Footswitch surround - which each change colours depending on the different functions selected.

By default the 4 knobs are just basic Gain, Tone, Accent (Dynamic Range / Compression) and Level, while pressing and holding each of those for 2 seconds - reveals further functionalities, parameters and features - including Gain Types, 3-Band EQ, and Low Frequency Mode.

There is also an additional remote A1-F Memory Footswitch accessory - which allows you to foot-switch the different Presets and pedal’s active / bypass state - that retails for $80. Where only 50 Limited Launch Axentix A1 Pedals have been made available so far at an introductory price of $200. Bixonic seems only to be shipping to the USA currently - "Unfortunately, we can only ship to locations within the US for the time being".

I’m of course a huge fan of the Expandora format - and so it only follows that I wanted / needed one of these for the collection. Fortunately one of the Demo artists was selling his copy pn Reverb.com along with the remote footswitch controller - so I have a set en route to me currently.

There’s much about the pedal that is pretty unique - and I have actually had a pretty decent experience with Digital and Hybrid Multi-Drive / Overdrive pedals - so of course open to trying another of that ilk.

My two favourite Expandora recommendations are currently for Decibelics’ Mini The Reverend take, as well as Drunk Beaver’s latest iteration of its Bloom pedal. It will be interesting to see how the Axentrix A1 compares to those two. The Axentrix kind of breaks one of my unwritten rules - in terms of not having as many Presets as it has Modes / Algorithms. I typically rotate and use all 4 Expandora modes - where here I will need to pick out a favourite three - so I need to decide between Overdrive and Crunch!

A lot of people are squeamish about Digital DSP Gain pedals - and frequently with good reason - while of late these have been getting better and better - where for some certain deployments the differences are no longer easily discernible.

I admire innovation pretty much everywhere I find it - and this is for sure one such pedal - its form factor is pretty special in so many ways. I’m really looking forward to put this one through its paces!

Anyone else interested in the Axentrix A1?