Musicians and engineers are always looking for ways to solve problems, both in the studio and onstage. There are certainly a lot of products that take care of a single issue, but it is rare that a device solves multiple problems as elegantly as the Pigtronix Keymaster pedal ($299 MSRP; $249 street). Like many Pigtronix products, the Keymaster is feature rich, but this particular stompbox goes far beyond what you’d expect.

Dual Effects Loops That Blend
The Keymaster offers two true-bypass effects loops—accessed via heavy-duty 3PDT footswitches—that can run either in series or parallel depending on the position of the toggle switch in the middle. Flanking the switch are two knobs, one for boosting the input by as much as 10dB and one for boosting the output another 10dB.

The remaining knob is the Crossfade control, which functions only when the pedal is in Parallel mode. This allows you to blend the processed signals returning from the two loops. Crossfading can also be controlled with an expression pedal (available separately), which disengages the Crossfade knob when plugged in.

The Keymaster has XLR and 1/4-inch (balanced/unbalanced) jacks on the inputs and the outputs. If you plug into one of the 1/4-inch jacks, it interrupts the signal at the corresponding XLR connector. The effects loops are accessed from the 1/4-inch send/return jacks on either side of the pedal. The 1/4-inch expression pedal input is on the back of the unit, next to the power connect for the included 18VDC wall-wart power supply.

Perhaps the most obvious use for the Keymaster is as a handy way to blend two effects loop, just like you would with a pair of faders on a console. This is useful for, say, running a guitar or keyboard through a distortion pedal and a reverb pedal, and blending them to taste into an amplifier onstage.

One of the first surprise functions of the Keymaster is that you can bypass one of the loops, thereby passing your clean sound through one side of the pedal, and giving you a wet/dry balance for the pedals plugged into the other loop. This opens up a huge door for using effects without built-in blend controls, especially ones that substantially change your tone.

I found this extremely useful for bass, which can often suffer when run through low-end-killing fuzz and distortion effects. Another benefit of this function is that pedals without true bypass can be used without sucking your tone when they’re switched off.

Splitting, Reamping, DI
Another surprising feature on the Keymaster is that is can serve as an active A/B/Y box. The send jacks can feed a single instrument into two different amplifiers, each activated by stomping on the corresponding loop switch. Conversely, you can plug two instruments into the return jacks and choose which feeds the main output via the stomp switches, or mix them together with either the Crossfade knob or an expression pedal.

But wait, there’s more: the Keymaster really shines when used as interface between a line-level source (such as a recording device) and instrument-level effects and amplifiers. The XLR and TRS inputs are impedance-matched, so you can plug the output from a tape machine or DAW directly into the Keymaster, which then serves as a reamp box. Because there is no attenuation available (only boost), the level may still be too hot for some pedals. In that case you’ll need some sort of attenuator in the signal path, ahead of the Keymaster.

I utilize this sort of reamping all the time in the studio, and the Keymaster provides something that I have been craving for quite a long time: a single box that both feeds pedals from my patchbay and also returns the processed signal to line level for printing back onto tape or into my DAW. The Keymaster can do this because it is basically a DI, as well. I have other reamp/DI boxes, but they can only function as one or the other at a time; the Keymaster not only gets rid of an extra piece of gear in the chain, but also allows you to utilize the same effects loop and blend the stuff described above with your line-level pre-recorded tracks. Pinch me!

Because it has an XLR input, most people are going to want to plug a microphone directly into the Keymaster and utilize its double-effects-loop crossfade capabilities on vocals, drums, pianos, horns, and anything else you can stick a mic in front of. Pigtronix makes it clear that the Keymaster is not designed to be a microphone preamp per se, and also points out that the input can accept the line-level output of an outboard mic pre. However, I found that the 20dB of boost available between the two gain stages was plenty to get a Shure SM58 up to a decent level to feed either an amplifier or the line input of my console, making the effects loops available for anything you can mic.

Unlocking Creativity
I used the Keymaster for several weeks and found it to be very well built, incredibly easy to operate, and remarkably useful. It is, in a phrase, a problem solver.

Pigtronix’s David Koltai informed me that it’s possible to get a factory modification that allows you to switch one of the loops of the Keymaster out of phase, allowing you to squeeze even more tonal variety out of the effect pedals you already have. It’s that kind of creative thinking that leads to such an innovative product: I can’t recommend the Keymaster highly enough.

Pros: Effects loop. DI. Reamping. Splitter. XLR and 1/4-inch inputs.

Cons: None.

Eli Crews co-owns and operates New, Improved Recording in Oakland, CA. He has recorded or mixed records by Deerhoof, WHY? and Kyp Malone (of TV on the Radio).