TEFI Vintage Lab delivers properly smart Malinconia Analog Lo-Fi Machine

We’re likely living through the age of Lo-Fi - there have been so many pedals that tackle this palette of sounds. Often of a chorusing or tape effects nature - combining filtering, modulation, and saturation style outputs with somewhat vinyl and crackly radio noises onboard.

Very recently we had the all-digital Source Audio Artifakt - which landed for me about a fortnight ago. This overlaps with that quite a bit - not quite so expansive - while there are a number of areas in common.

Controls - Wobble Depth, Noise (radio / vinyl noise), Filter (resonant low-pass filter), Power Level (saturation), Warp Depth, Speed, Bass Cut, Volume Level.

As the Malinconia is an all-analog device - everything / every parameter is fully surfaces and instantly accessible. You have 8 relatively straight forward control knobs - while some are a little more nuanced than others. But the essence is to combine those in various ways to reduce the fidelity of the output signal - or shave off any sharp edges.

There’s nothing complicated here, or necessarily super unique - but as with any musical device - some skill is required to get the very best out of the device.

I really rather like the look of this! It lacks the stereo outputs and presets of the Artifakt but makes up for it in other interesting ways.

These are actually proving to be very popular and the first batch of these sold out in record time. There really is a big appreciation for these types of effects nowadays - and companies are competing to outdo each other with unique and expansive feature sets.

The Malinconia Analog Lo-Fi Machine goes for €368 - which is certainly not cheap, but somehow that doesn’t seem to matter. Looks like pre-orders are currently suspended with a note that the previous preorders will start shipping on October 8th. So evidently the pedal isn’t fully ready.

Most of the companies I work with aim to have 150-250 units ready for launch - and then announce the size and frequency of batches - which doesn’t seem to be the case here.

There’s much to like here - while I can’t help feeling that such a format would be better off carrying the Chase Bliss Digital Brain / Analog Heart philosophy - such that you could save MIDI Presets, but have the signal path fully analog - with just a digital surface control interface.

For sure a cool pedal, which appeals to the analog purists - while the Source Audio Artifakt is overall probably more suitable to my preferences and sensibilities.

There’s access to a decent operating manual online, and while you wait for further preorders to be announce - you can read more details on the TEFI Vintage Lab website.