Lightfoot Labs Goatkeeper Demo

Lightfoot Labs has released V2 of their amazing tremelo pedal called the Goatkeeper. It is different than other tremelo pedals in that it offers tap tempo speed control as well as a four stage sequencer. It also has all of the standard wave forms (sine, square, ramp up, ramp down) as well as user set waveforms (through a unique waveshaping feature).

You can easily use it as a classic tremelo pedal by simply turning off three of the four stages and using a sine wave form.

Additionally, the Goatkeeper is capable of extremely deep and choppy helicopter-like trems, using the square wave form. With most other tremelo pedals, if you set it to a deep square wave form, and you increase the speed, it usually gets to a point where the circuit cannot respond fast enough to create a choppy sound and the trems start to blend together. The Goatkeeper, on the other hand, manages to keep chopping away even at fast settings, until it gets into ring-mod territory!

Here's a basic demo that I did of the Goatkeeper's basic function.



At the time I did not have an expression pedal so I used a knob in a box. But it's a LOT more fun being able to control with your feet!

Here's another demo I did where I also got to show off another one of my favorite pedals, the 4MS Atoner. A quick word on the Atoner: this is a circuit that shifts the input pitch down octaves and fifths at jump-points. What does that mean? I have no idea, and just wanted to sound smart! But basically it produces the thickest, swarming, bumblebee, breathing wall of fuzz you've ever heard. It is downright huge sounding.



Finally, here's a video of me showing what kind of sync'ing possibilities you can do by combining a delay pedal with the Goatkeeper.



Just set your delay first to whatever speed you want (works nice with slower delay times like 1 sec). And then play a chord and listen to the repeats. Tap the Goatkeeper to the sound of the repeats. And that's it. The two pedals are sync'd up.

A delay is generally very easy to sync up with a tremelo pedal or a drum-track. The reason is that with delay, slight errors in sync'ing are non-cumulative. This means that slight imperfections in sync'ing will trail off in a matter of seconds, and new delayed notes are continuously resync'd to the beat of the tremelo through human playing. Give it a try with a Goatkeeper sometime!

There are actually many more features I haven't shown. Such as the waveshaper that I mentioned briefly. Also, there is LFO Out and Sync In jacks that allow you to control other pedals with its advanced sequencing and waveshaping abilities. It also allows you to input a click track or drum machine to set the tempo, giving you sync'ing capabilities.