Electro-Harmonix Pitch Fork User Manual

Pitch Fork
POLYPHONIC PITCH-SHIFTER/HARMONY PEDAL
Congratulations on your purchase of the Electro-Harmonix Pitch Fork, a compact,
battery powered, polyphonic pitch-shifter/harmony pedal. The Pitch Fork transposes
the pitch of your instrument over a range of up to +/- 3 octaves. Three different
available pitch-shifting modes allow the pitch to be transposed up, down or both
simultaneously in Dual mode. The pitch shift amount can be set to a fixed interval or
continuously varied by an expression pedal or control voltage. The Pitch Fork's
footswitch features two different modes of operation: Latch and Momentary.
Momentary allows rapid toggling between effect and bypass for quick blasts of pitch
bending. The BLEND knob is a wet/dry control allowing you to create the perfect mix
of your dry and transposed signals.
WARNING: Your PITCH FORK comes equipped with an Electro-Harmonix 9.6DC-200BI power
supply (same as used by Boss ® & Ibanez
30mA at 9VDC with a center negative plug or runs off a 9Volt battery. Using the wrong adaptor
or a plug with the wrong polarity may damage your PITCH FORK and void the warranty.
GETTING STARTED
Connect the output plug of the supplied power adaptor to the 9V power jack. Plug
your instrument into the INPUT jack; connect your amp to the OUTPUT jack. Set the
toggle switch to UP arrow and press the LATCH button so it is down. Turn BLEND
fully clockwise and set SHIFT to 1, as in 1 octave up. Press the footswitch until the
LED lights up. You will hear all your notes shifted up 1 octave. Connect an optional
expression pedal to continuously vary the pitch from unity up to 1 octave.
Press the LATCH button so it is up. The footswitch now has a momentary action:
when pressed the effect activates and pitch is shifted; when released, the effect is
bypassed. Connect an expression pedal to control glissando rate of the momentary
footswitch. If the EXP jack is vacant, pitch will change at the default glissando rate of
60ms (this is user adjustable).
BLEND KNOB
The BLEND knob mixes between the untreated, analog dry signal and the effected
signal. At BLEND's full clockwise position, the output is 100% wet.
SHIFT KNOB
The SHIFT knob selects the maximum interval of chromatic transposition. The chart
below shows how the pitch will be shifted relative to the original pitch.
D m2 M2 M3 P4
Detune Minor Major Major Perfect
2nd 2nd 3rd 4th
® : 9.6 Volts DC 200mA). The PITCH FORK requires
P5 M6 m7 1
Perfect Major Minor 1
5th 6th 7th Oct
MODE TOGGLE SWITCH
The MODE toggle switch selects whether the pitch is shifted up, down or both
simultaneously relative to the root. Dual mode outputs two pitch-shifted signals. One
of the shifted signals follows the SHIFT knob as if in UP mode. The other shifted
signal creates a musically useful harmony according to the SHIFT knob setting.
DUAL mode SHIFT knob Settings:
D m2
Detune Deep
Detune
LATCH BUTTON
The LATCH button selects Latch or Momentary mode. This affects how the footswitch
and EXP jack input behave. When the LATCH button is down, Latch mode is enabled.
The footswitch toggles between effect and bypass each time you press and release
the footswitch; the EXP input continuously varies pitch. When the LATCH button is in
the up position, Momentary mode is selected. The effect is only on while the
footswitch is held down, otherwise the Pitch Fork is bypassed; the EXP input varies
the glissando rate of the momentary footswitch.
BYPASS FOOTSWITCH & STATUS LED
The footswitch toggles between effect on and buffered bypass. In Latch mode, each
press and release of the footswitch toggles between effect and bypass modes. In
Momentary mode, when the footswitch is held down, the effect is on, when the
footswitch is released, the Pitch Fork enters bypass. The status LED lights when in
Effect mode.
EXP JACK
EXPression input jack accepts a TRS expression pedal connector or a Tip-Sleeve 0-5V
control voltage input. The expression pedal should ideally use a 10k potentiometer
with linear rather than audio taper. It must have the wiper connected to TIP and toe-
down connected to RING. Pedals made by some manufacturers do not conform to
this convention, and would need a special cable to swap RING and TIP. Some
suggested Expression Pedals: EHX Expression Pedal, M-Audio
EP-3, Roland ® EV-5 or Boss
LATCH MODE - the Expression/CV input controls pitch shift amount,

ranging from unity, or no pitch shift, in the heel position to the interval set
by the SHIFT knob for the toe position. Pitch varies continuously from heel
to toe in all settings.
MOMENTARY MODE - the Expression/CV input controls glissando rate for

the Pitch Fork's footswitch. When the bypass footswitch is pressed, the Pitch
Fork jumps from bypass to the pitch shift interval set by the SHIFT knob.
The amount of time it takes to reach the SHIFT knob's interval setting is the
2 3
glissando rate. When the footswitch is released, pitch will return to unity by
2 3
the same rate. When your expression pedal is heel-down the rate is 4ms, in
Oct Oct
M2 M3 P4 P5 M6
M2 M3 P4 P5 M6
up up up up up
+ + + + +
M6 P5 P5 1 Oct P5
up up down down down
® FV-500L.
m7 1 2 3
m7 1 Oct 2 Oct 3 Oct
up up up up
+ + + +
M6 1 Oct 1 Oct 1 Oct
up down down down
® EX-P, Moog ® EP-2 &