Binary Pulsar
David Rainger has spent years building some of the most gleefully unconventional pedals in Britain, and the Binary Pulsar is a milestone for his one-man operation: Rainger FX's first stereo pedal. It reboots the concept of the discontinued Deep Space Pulsar — the mini pedal that brought sidechain pumping to guitar — and supersizes it into a stereo sidechainer, panner and tremolo with genuinely studio-grade ambitions. Sidechaining is the production technique behind the 'breathing' sound of modern electronic music, where one signal ducks whenever another hits. The Binary Pulsar brings that to pedalboards: feed the XLR/TRS sidechain input a kick drum, drum machine or click, and your guitar or synth pumps in rhythm with it. No external trigger? The internal engine handles tremolo and auto-panning duties with tap tempo, and CV/gate sync connects it to modular systems — a clear signal of who Rainger expects to buy this. In stereo the effect becomes spatial: signals bounce, duck and sweep between left and right with filtering along the way, turning static parts into moving ones. A switchable analog 'warm' circuit adds saturation so the pumping stays musical rather than clinical. With its space-scene graphics, glowing controls and Rainger's trademark eccentricity, it is equal parts effect and instrument. For synth players, producers and adventurous guitarists chasing rhythmic motion that ordinary tremolos cannot provide, the Binary Pulsar occupies a niche almost entirely by itself.
