When we released CoyoPedal, we ended alongside a paragraph concerning owning hardware and choosing what runs on it, and promised it deserved a article of its own. The discussion that followed on Reddit made it apparent that the paragraph was the part group wanted to conversation about. So current is the longer version, and an invitation at the end of it.
Unlimited tweakability, two sounds
I have played guitar for twenty-five years and performed for twenty. In that period I have owned, borrowed and gigged through most of the multi-effects units that mattered, and all one of them sold me the identical promise: hundreds of amps, thousands of presets, endless routing, profound menus, a companion app.
Here is what really happens. However lengthy I expend alongside any of these boxes, I end up on a brace of sounds. One clean, one driven, perchance a third. That is exactly how it worked alongside an analogue pedalboard, and it is how it motionless plant alongside a modeller. I perform a three-hour gig on one or two presets and toggle effects on and off as the opus asks for them. That is the entire job.
The tweakability is real. It is additionally mostly beside the item for a operating player. What decides whether a component stays on my commission is much additional mundane: does it have the inputs I need, does it have adequate footswitches, does the mic input activity since I chant too, does it fit the case, and do the two appears I use all night really audio right.
The industry has these two questions the incorrect way round. It competes on the list and treats the hardware as the shipment scheme for it. For most of us it is the reverse.
Buy hardware for what it is
Take the Ampero II Stage. I akin it a awesome deal. The form aspect is right, the footswitches are anywhere my feet anticipate them, it has the knobs and controls I want, and it has a microphone input, which for a chanting guitarist is not a nice-to-have. As a part of hardware it is near to what I would scheme myself.
It additionally has a three-core DSP phase inner it with, by our estimate, item akin five times the handling headroom of an ESP32. And it cannot run a full-size NAM A2 profile. Not since the silicon cannot do it, but since the firmware was never written to.
That is the gap firmware liberty is about. I am blessed to pay any a fine enclosure, fine converters, fine switches and a fine display cost. What I am not blessed concerning is being told that the sounds, the interface and the workflow of that hardware are fixed by whoever wrote the firmware, forever, any my own needs rotate out to be.
We should buy hardware for what it is: hardware. Then we have to be capable to run what we desire on it, the way we can on a computer, a phone alongside an unlockable bootloader, or an e-reader alongside a community firmware. The device neutrality disagreement is not new. It has merely never been applied to the box under a guitarist's feet.
We have already shown what this looks akin in a small way. An iRig HD X is a guitar interface alongside a fine input, a headphone output and a quantity wheel. Its firmware made it an interface. A distinct firmware made it an amp modeller, and nothing concerning the hardware changed.
The chips are already fine enough, and cheap
The another fractional of this disagreement is concerning what a processor expenses in 2026.
An ESP32-S3 is concerning $3 as a chip. We have A2-Full operating on it live, alongside six effects and a tuner about the amp, hosting a USB audio interface and example a touchscreen. That is the S3 at its limit, and it is the part CoyoPedal ships on.
An ESP32-P4 is concerning $4. When we first wrote concerning it it ran one A2-Full model. It now runs two A2-Full models at once, in a completely stereo dual-lane configuration, alongside ten additional consequence blocks alongside them. That is a two-amp wet/dry/wet rig on a part that expenses small than a set of strings.
Set that beside the dedicated DSPs that the established platforms are built around, and the difference is not flattering to the DSPs. General-purpose microcontrollers alongside vector units have caught up on the arithmetic, they are dramatically cheaper, and they arrive alongside a contemporary toolchain, USB host, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth for free. Designing a tradition commission about one of these that competes alongside the big platforms on audio is, accept it or not, a no-brainer. We are doing exactly that.
There is no concealed sauce
This is the uncomfortable part for the industry, so let me say it plainly.
There is no concealed condiment in any of this. The amp models are open: Neural Amp Modeler is open-source, and the capture libraries are enormous and free. The effects are textbook DSP. The difficult parts, making it fit a small part and making it awareness akin a pedal, are engineering, not magic, and we have been writing up how we did it all summer.
Writing a new consequence has rotate into genuinely quick, too. If you have sensation and cognize what you are listening for, designing the consequence of your dreams is an midday or two of work, alongside contemporary AI tools doing a fine portion of the typing. I lately built a physically modelled fountain reverb tuned to my own ear that way. Full disclosure: I trained as an electronics engineer and started operating on audio circuits twenty years ago, so I had a caput start. But it is doable, and we volition publish that reverb as a plugin shortly so you can fairness it yourself.
When the models are open, the effects are known, and the chips are cheap, what is remaining to keep proprietary is the firmware. Companies keep it closed since it is the lone item that is motionless closed, not since there is item in it that could not be rebuilt.
Full circle
Fifteen years ago I built pedalboard.js, a archive for construction guitar effects in the browser alongside the Web Audio API. It was a toy in the finest sense: you dragged pedals about a leaf and played through them.
Today CoyoPedal runs in the browser in much the identical fashion, apart from that the identical code additionally compiles to a $3 microcontroller and runs a genuine amp model. We have arrive complete circle, and I think the timing is eventually correct for the item pedalboard.js was too first to be: an open ecosystem for guitar effects that does not pertain to any one manufacturer.
We are additionally construction the hardware flank of that in earnest. We have partnered alongside among the world's most innovative device makers to bring a component built on these principles to life. More on that whenever it is prepared to show.
What we desire to build, together
CoyoPedal is the seed. The goal is for it to develop into a community-driven firmware for guitar handling that can be loaded onto any processor phase and any hardware of the player's choosing. One codebase, alongside the amp engine, effects, presets and interface, that targets the S3 and the P4 today and any DSP or microcontroller you item it at tomorrow. Daisy-chaining boxes is one answer to "I need more"; a firmware that runs the identical rig on a bigger part is a improved one.
That is not item we can do alone, and we do not desire to. So, plainly:
- Open-source community. The source is on GitHub under GPLv3. Ports to new boards, new effects, improved editors, test coverage, documentation: all of it is welcome, and we volition assistance you get started.
- Guitar community. Tell us what your rig really needs. Not the characteristic list, the two appears and the six switches. Build a pedal, grasp an amp, compose a reverb you akin improved than ours, and display us.
- Processor companies. If you create a part alongside a vector component and a USB host, we would akin to run on it. We have done S3 and P4; we are blessed to bring the motor up on your silicon and publish the numbers.
- Existing pedal and modeller companies. This is the invitation we attention most about. You already create the hardware group love. Open it up. Document the codec, the switches, the display and the DSP, unlock the bootloader, and let the firmware rotate into item the community can improve. You volition market additional hardware, not less, and your customers volition halt waiting for a example that never ships.
Nobody is asking anyone to provision distant their own firmware. We are asking for the entrance to be unlocked so that a distinct one can go in.
If any of that is you, get in touch. Firmware liberty is the direction the entire site is heading, and we average to guide the charge. Welcome to the new world.
