Right, but that’s using filter modulation instead of pitch modulation. It might be repeating, but it would still be atonal. Which has its own appeal, but it’d be a very difficult-to-design box.

well then you could do a step sequencer

That would be prohibitively expensive…

not necessarily

julian - 05 August 2009 08:28 PM

This is why some effects just shouldn’t be analog:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JFSQ5ZRxlis

The only polyphonic pitch shifter ever made.  It was prohibitively expensive too.

Well, julian, that really sounds über weird! Beyond attractive, I would say. Really more like an electronic washing machine-type effect.
If I remember, it was possible to create S&H arpeggio effects with the EHX Minisynthesizer from 1980.
I agree that any arpeggiator brought out today should be digital.