Pedal maker Walrus Audio just put two of its ambient pedals back on the board in new form. The Lore Stereo Reverse Soundscape Generator MKII and the Fable Stereo Granular Soundscape Generator MKII (MKII meaning Mark II) went live on the company's official store on October 13, and both were listed as in stock when we checked this afternoon. Walrus groups them on one page, Lore and Fable Stereo MKII, and the instruction manuals for both are dated the same day.
What changed from the originals
The first Lore and Fable are now tagged discontinued on Walrus Audio's store. Their product pages describe two DSP (digital signal processing) chips running in series, and neither description mentions stereo, MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) or presets. The MKII pages answer all three. Walrus says both new pedals are stereo ambient creation machines with MIDI, expression control and savable presets, built on MDSP, the company's own in-house digital processing platform.
The five modes carry over in spirit. Each one pairs two effects that feed into each other through separate feedback paths, set by the Feedback and Regen (regeneration) knobs, so the sound keeps developing instead of repeating.
Lore MKII: reverse everything
The Lore is built around reverse delay, reverse reverb and pitch shifting. Mode I runs reverse delay into reverse reverb. Modes II and III are Walrus's light and dark reverbs, one adding an octave-up shimmer, the other an octave-down rumble with heavy filtering and harmonic distortion. Mode IV stacks reverse reverb into forward reverb for instant ambient pads, and Mode V sets two dueling pitch delays against each other, acting like a sequencer at long delay times and a harmonizer at short ones. It comes in Green or Black.
Fable MKII: granular weirdness
The Fable chops your signal into grains, tiny samples read from a delay buffer, then plays them back reversed, at double or half speed, or from several points at once. Its modes run from reverse delay into reverse granular, through an octave-up swarm and an analog-style delay into octave-down grains, to a multi-tap Grain-Verb and a mode where every grain picks a random speed and direction. It comes in Gray or Black.
The new tricks both share
- Tweak: one knob with five jobs. It sets stereo Width, LFO (low-frequency oscillator) rate, LFO shape (sine, square or random), plus Shift and Ramp for the Dive / Rise effect.
- Dive / Rise: hold the tap switch to bend the pedal's clock rate down or up, anywhere from half to double speed, over a ramp from 50 milliseconds to five seconds.
- Presets: three on the pedal plus a live mode, and another 127 over MIDI. Expression assignments save with each preset.
- MIDI and expression: MIDI clock sets delay time, every knob responds to MIDI CC (control change) messages, and any knob can be assigned to the expression jack, which can also work as an external tap input.
Per the Lore MKII manual and Fable MKII manual, both have two inputs and two outputs, buffered bypass, a 1/8 inch TRS (tip, ring, sleeve) Type A MIDI jack and selectable trails. They need a 9 volt DC center-negative supply with at least 300 milliamps, which is not included. The fairy artwork on both enclosures is credited to illustrator Niall Grant. The official price sits on each product page.
Who should care
If you build drones and pads out of a guitar or a synth, these are two of the more storybook-looking tools for it. For more texture gear and the music that pairs with it, see the Meris Ottobit X pedal, our ambient music starter guide and Liz Harris's Music for Two Films About Water.
Shop Lore MKII · Shop Fable MKII · Lore and Fable Stereo MKII
