Just a hello, I received my Pink Ribbons just before Christmas.
Ive had limited time to play on it, but when I did, wow. This is super deep, and that was just playing with the obvious controls before “menu diving” into the layers.
It sounds really cool. I am not a huge buyer of new effects and I tend to loathe the zeitgeist / flavour of the month pedals. I have been playing for over 25 years and been into collecting, building and modifying effects for over 10 years (some of you might recognise me from other forums especially DIY ones). I have a fondness for analog but am not a purist. I look for insipirational sounds. The reason for looking into a Ribbons was because I felt like I wanted more than just a wierd vibrato, wanted something random-er, and wasnt gonna shell out for a Generation Loss (and frankly was turned off a lot by Chase Bliss marketing, strategy and actually how the MK2 works - a lot has been said that I wont repeat)…
Anyway, here I am. I am sure I will be back to post stuff up, and thanks also to the creator for my pesterings via instagram DM. This was a bit of a leap for me as its not cheap device, plus about 30% to get one to the UK in customs, shipping and fees. So far the engineering alone I rate this higher than Chase Bliss pedals (sorry for the shallow comparison, but I feel they do set a bit of a benchmark for the form factor and, recently at least, wierd/niche digital soundscaping effects).
For someone that was both alarmed and enchanted by the 2002 release “Geogaddi” by Boards of Canada, it is amazing to be able recreate some of the sounds of that album (well, probably a lot actually) which was so ahead of its time in a single device. Quite frankly astonishing.
Bravo, thankyou, and cheers
Ian / LaceSensor
Gigahearts_fx
edit - for those that dont get the musical reference - see here
Thanks for posting on the forum Ian! So glad you’re having fun with Ribbons.
I’ll eventually release all of Ribbons’ hardware and software files open source. If you’re interested in remixing or hacking Ribbons, there will definitely be an opportunity for that sort of thing!
Ugh. I know the customs fees suck. In the future we’d love to find a way to make it easier for international folks to get their hands on Kinotone creations. Being such a small and new company it’s just hard for us to cover extra costs right now. Thanks so much for being willing to support us though! I know it can feel risky to take a chance on a totally new business and product and I’m so happy to know you think it was worth it. I knew early on Ribbons would need to be priced ~$399 and definitely engineered so that people would feel like they were getting a lot for their money.
I’m a big Warp Records fan! I can’t overstate the influence that BoC, Broadcast, Bibio, and others have had on me over the last decade. I definitely wanted Ribbons to inspire people to make those Warp-adjacent sounds. Ribbons was originally going to be called Tapes but it felt too on-the-nose. I was listening to Bibio’s Ribbons record a lot during the development and I felt like the name Ribbons was the perfect way to describe this thing I was making - something like tape but not quite; something wavy, wiggly, and playful.
Thanks for the musical recommendation, checking out that record now.
To elaborate a bit on the “leap” thing and the cost/value equation. Firstly this pedal is well priced for both the engineering (including interface and footprint) but also the abundance of sounds available. I was weary as I was very keen to get a Microcosm Hologram. Luckily a local pedal head (Luke from Stone Deaf Fx) had one I could borrow as weve been friends for years and it was such a disappointment to me. That would have been about 50% more than the Ribbons all told to get one in my hands so I was really cautious.
Luckily Luke also wants a Ribbons and missed the last batch, and said he would buy it off me if I didnt like it so that took some risk out of it sadly for Luke its a keeper
As for hacking and modifying it, my skills are very much in the analog domain for better or worse. The idea of sharing your work with the community would be very valued I trust and a great philosophy to have. What little I could give back over the years Ive very happy (and sometimes a bit proud, too) and its only for the sake of the internet and some early giants that I ever bought a soldering iron (RG Keen, Madbean etc)
sadly for Luke its a keeper