The TC Electronic Brainwaves is a great pitchshifter pedal! It has versatile functionalities, but it's not flawless. It has one big flaw that to me is almost a dealbreaker.
Let's first take a look at the positives.
POSITIVES:
The mash function! It gives you a lot versatility and possibilities to creativity.
You have a chorus by using the Detune setting.
Toneprint! Download presets and have fun. There are a lot of different ones, some pretty insane ones.
Problem with the Toneprint software: It's almost unusable. There is no manual and no explanation on what different parameters do. That makes it frustrating trying to tweak your own presets. I haven't tried this, but you might be able to have your pedal plugged into an amp or an amp sim and listen while you tweak. Still, it's all just a shot in the dark.
NEGATIVES:
Pitch shifting has latency! It's only for a few milliseconds, but it's audible. Let me explain...
It's a polyphonic pitch shifter and when I want to tune down from E standard to, say, D standard or something more extreme, like B standard, it sounds out of tune.
To clarify: Using this pedal with the Mix knob at 100 % just isn't good enough, the guitar sounds out of tune. The reason for that is that at the initial attack when you play a note, the dry signal comes through for a few milliseconds. It's subtle, but if you play a little one note melody with ringing notes, you'll sound out of tune. There is no way to kill the dry signal leaking through at the initial attack.
I contacted TC Electronic, got great help from the support, I recorded a video for them, and they told me to contact the dealer (Thomann) because they couldn't replicate what I showed them. Thomann sent me a new pedal.
But it turns out the problem wasn't with my unit (except for the fact that putting it in buffered bypass didn't give any signal besides some distorted fart noise). It's just how the pedal is. It has a latency, so the pitch shifting kicks in a little too late for the pedal to be useful with the Mix knob at 100 %.
I compared the Brainwaves to the DigiTech Drop, and the difference is night and day! Sure, the DigiTech Drop does only that one thing, but there is no dry signal leak, there is no latency in the pitch shifting.
I wonder if this issue with the Brainwaves could be fixed with a firmware update.
