Meet The ALABS Audio Pedals: Novadrift Modulation and Orbit Pitch Pedals

Not quite expensive, but not quite cheap, these pedals bring a lot of the versatility of premium pedals to a more accessible level.

Want to grab your own ALABS pedals? Go grab them here.

While researching which pedals to cover in 2024, I stumbled across ALABS Audio on Instagram. They seemed familiar, even though I had no idea where from, so I decided to reach out and introduce myself. While most pedal companies usually message back about how their klon clone is SO different from the others, I was pleasantly surprised to see that ALABS Audio had four distinct pedals of their own. No drives, no Klones, no boosts, just four multi-voiced pedals that were relatively affordable to boot!

These four pedals include the Timeslip Delay, Orbital Pitch Shifter, Cetus Reverb, and Novadrift Modulation, which makes up their Adam Adventure Series of pedals. All four are true stereo in and out, with 9 different voicings within each effect type. For more concrete details, you can visit each pedal’s page on their website by clicking here. But I’ll give a quick rundown here too.

Cetus Reverb: hall, room, church, spring, plate, swell, shimmer, cloudy, and wave

Orbital Pitch Shifter: major 3rd, 4th, 5th, and octave, up and down for reach plus unison shift mode with a microtonal pitch.

Timeslip Delay: tape echo, digital, analog reverse, warp, granular, octave, sweeper, and swell

Novadrift Modulation: vibrato, chorus, multi-chorus, phaser, filter, rotary, flanger, tremolo, and ring mod.

That is a lot of combinations of sound. And if I was going to independently review each and every setting and sound it would be my largest article ever. So instead, I’m going to give more broad overviews, opinions, and tips on how to best use this/who they are for. And for reference, these pedals range from about $99-109.99 on Amazon via the link at the top of the article. In this article, we will discuss the Novadrift Modulation and Orbit Pitch only, if you want to read about the others, please go visit Part I of this review.

Back For More

Alright I was objectively VERY impressed by the first two ALABS pedals, so I’ve been looking forward to diving back in. I’ll admit, multi-modulation is one of my favorite categories, so the Novadrift has a high bar to beat, but I’ve never really played too many multi-function pitch pedals. I owned the EHX Pitch Fork for awhile, but it never really clicked for me. And while I love the Digitech Whammy, I had a few break on me, so I’m looking for new love with the Orbit.

I’ll cut to the chase, the Orbit was my clear favorite of the two. I absolutely love the sounds it can produce for octave, 5th, 4th, and doubled sounds. I’m not musically educated enough to know how to use a 3rd as an anything more than dissonance. But the sounds were really fun, even if they were at some times a bit “plastic” compared to other pitch pedals I’ve used. This is no Digitech Whammy, but the Orbit made a lot of licks and chords feel and sound good.

The best part was that while using the rate and detune knobs, you can really manipulate the Orbit like it’s a modulation pedal. You can pull chorus-y or near vibe/tremolo sounds out of it, which greatly expands what the pedal can do. It’s bright, shiny, and can be dulled via the tone knob for heavier sludge on low octaves. ALABS’ Orbit is just fun, and that’s a killer outcome if you’re buying a pedal for $100 or so. I absolutely see it sticking around.

Unfortunately I cannot say the same about the Novadrift multi-mod. The other 3 ALABS pedals have really floored me, but I just could not connect with this one. So many of the modulation sounds all kinda blend together, and they all had this sort of “liquid” echo that I couldn’t shake. Many of the best modulation pedals can go from very subtle harmonic content to full on flutter. But here, it always felt like full on flutter was just around the corner. Maybe I’m not spending enough time on it, but I could NOT find a tremolo sound that worked for me here, they all felt shallow and quiet. Similar issues arose for me with the flanger and phaser sounds. I’m notoriously picky with modulation, so if you’re more of a generalist, this pedal may still work for you.

3 out of 4 aint bad!

While the Novadrift may have not wowed me, the other 3 ALABS pedals discussed in these two articles did wow me. These are fun, easy to plug and play, and not nearly as expensive as some of their competition. I’m taking these over some of the Walrus Mako Series pedals anyday. While we’ve covered a lot of boutique pedals from smaller brands, this is a smaller/newer brand that’s very accessible. And these pedals from ALABS Audio will be ranked right alongside stuff that’s 2-3 times more expensive, because it’s just as good!