Kinotone follows up its innovative Ribbons Magnetic Tape Multi-FX with the equally smart Sparks Stereo Analog Harmonic Processor

So I’ve always liked the look of the Kinotone Ribbons, in fact I wrote a very favourable review of it back in October of 2022. While I’ve yet to hit the trigger for that - I’m actually still deliberating and determining exactly where I would place it in my rig / signal chain, and which pedal it would knock out of its slot.

I was initially having a similar internal debate for the Sparks - until I spotted that one of the Factory Presets was for Harmonic Tremolo! You should all know by now how much I like that format of modulation. So in an extreme way - I can simply view this Sparks as being another great Harmonic Tremolo for my rig but having several potent extras onboard (e.g. presets) - obviously including all the Wavefolding features, and Variable State Filtering, alongside a pretty potent Overdrive / Saturation voicing.

My write ups are always part-therapy - as I endeavour to reason out each effects pedal and try to fully imagine how I might / would deploy such a pedal within my own rig!

It’s kind of fitting that we have the European Football Championship on currently - as my mind is constantly on Team Selection and Balance. And I think I can apply the same methodologies to a pedalboard arrangement - it’s not necessarily about having the very ’best’ of every effect pedal on the board, but rather achieving a perfect balance or harmony of interactive and positively combining effects. I often talk of a pedalboard as being a Spice Rack or Smorgasbord, and there are various adjacent cooking analogies about timing and balancing of flavour profiles that also apply.

In stacking different pedals together we’re creating a series of sonic cocktails - each obviously perfectly shaken or stirred to our liking. And when I deploy a pedal on my board - it’s always a mixture of how the pedal sounds and performs, and how it fits into the rig.

With the England Team, we have several players playing out of position - and while arguably England has many of the best players on a head-to-head basis - a lot of those are not playing to their best ability - and the balance of the team is all wrong. There’s a little bit of insanity with the coach too as he’s repeating the same patterns of play over and over and expecting different results - which is the very definition of madness!

In any case for the Sparks - I was able to figure out quite quickly where I would deploy it in my chain, and where I could make best use of it. The Ribbons may still be the superstar ’player’ but I’m still not sure where I would slot it in exactly - I am still determined to get one of those at some stage in the very near future in any case - hopefully I will have come to a decision by then. My good friend Cyril Demaegd is a huge advocate of the Ribbons - and loves their Touch Modes in particular - he’s totally convinced my on the merits of the Ribbons - I just need to figure out where to slot it in.

As per usual - I’ve tried to distill most of the pedal’s essential elements into a single visual (as above) but with both Kinotone pedals there’s always a lot more happening under the surface, and both varieties include a hidden / buried Synth Mode!

Controls - Mode [Blend], Filter Cutoff [LFO Spin], Filter Resonance [Gate], Gain [Level], LFO Rate [Wave Shape], LFO Map, LFO Range, 3 Modes : Drive / Low-Cut / Fold, Envelope Attack [Sensitivity], Layer (Black / White Controls / Parameters), Envelope Map, Preset Footswitch, Bypass Footswitch.

Ports : 9V DC [-] 280mA, CV / EXP in, TRS Stereo In, MIDI In, TRS Stereo Out.

Factory Presets

• Harmonic Reverse
• Gentle Drive
• Harmonic Tremolo
• Auto-Wah
• Crinkled Tape
• Dynamic Envelope Tremolo

Capable of : Overdrive, Fuzz, High Gain, Tremolo / Oscillation, Chip Tune Synth, Auto-Wah, Volume Swells, Warble etc.