Inspired by enthusiastic members of the Talkbass forum, the original designer of the Akai Deep Impact, Andras Szalay, designed an entirely new and vastly-improved bass synthesizer pedal in late 2015. Thus the Future Impact I. was born.
From there, the FI’s popularity and reputation grew. It is used by notable players such as Chris Wolstenholme of Muse, Doug Wimbish of Living Colour and The Rolling Stones, Bootsy Collins, Mohini Dey, Etienne M’Bappe and Dub FX.
To trigger the FI4’s analog modeling synthesizer* via audio input from any pitched instrument, select Instrument Mode bSS (Bass) or Gtr (Guitar). If your instrument is neither of these, choose whichever option best fits its pitch range. To trigger via MIDI, select Snt (Synth) or EUI (EWI). In any Instrument Mode you can also trigger an external analog synth via the 1V/Octave CV and Gate outputs using an optional adapter cable. (*More synthesizer models and features to come in free future updates.)
The 99 presets can all be accessed directly and easily on the pedal using the footswitches; they can also be accessed via an external midi controller. Every preset can be edited, or replaced by the user using the PC or MAC editor, connected through MIDI.
The synthesizer in the FI4 requires an input of cleanly-played monophonic notes for optimal pitch tracking performance.
The pitch detection algorithm is used also to drive a very accurate tuner, which mutes the audio during the time of tuning.
The most important 9 parameters which are used in sound shaping are accessible via the onboard controls, with their full ranges; these are:
Filter envelope attack time;
Filter envelope decay time;
Filter envelope depth;
Filter cutoff;
Filter resonance;
Dynamics (envelope follower/MIDI note velocity amount) to filter cutoff;
Dry/wet balance;
Overall level;
Effects level.
An editor for PC and MAC is available for creating and archieving sounds very interactively.
Deeper parameters are controllable via MIDI, with pre-mapped / standard assignments for filter cutoff, volume, octave switching, etc. A cloud-based preset sharing library is available with a huge number of presets provided by users.