Dreadbox FX Kinematic

The Kinematic by Dreadbox FX completely surprised me with its versatility.

I picked it up on a whim. I just wanted to try a Dreadbox pedal and this one popped up. At first I figured it was outside my wheelhouse, an auto-wah for funky licks. What I found after digging in is that it’s much more than just an envelope filter. It can be a cocked wah, a spanky VCA compressor, and a character drive, and it flips between those personalities from the same two knobs.

Controls

The big Filter knob owns the top left of the panel and does double duty depending on the Mode toggle sitting just below and to the right of it. In COMP COLOUR mode, Filter works as a frequency boost; flip the toggle to ENV FILTER and it becomes the cutoff for a low-pass filter with auto-sweep. That toggle is the real fork in the road, since it decides whether everything downstream behaves like a compressor or an auto-wah.

Drive sits center panel, to the left of the Mode toggle, and dials in a post-filter diode clipping stage that adds bite no matter which mode you’re in. Down at the bottom, Level sets output volume on the left, while the Envelope Amount knob on the right splits its job the same way the Filter knob does: it sets the compression ratio in COMP COLOUR mode, and the auto-sweep intensity in ENV FILTER mode. In the demo above, this knob’s own sweep is actually labeled Comp Colour, which tells you where the Kinematic’s heart really lives. I’ve also set up sweeps for the Filter and Drive knobs, so you can hear each control’s full range on its own before mixing them together. A single LED sits just above the soft-touch footswitch, which runs CMOS bypass rather than true bypass.

How It Sounds

The five presets in the demo show how far apart the two modes pull. Funky Wah sits in ENV FILTER mode with the Filter knob bottomed out and a middling Envelope Amount, giving that quick, vocal auto-wah snap over a fairly clean signal. Disco Synth stays in ENV FILTER too, but pushes Drive all the way up while backing the envelope sweep off, so the auto-wah motion goes subtle and the diode clipping does more of the talking, landing somewhere between a synth bass and a fuzzed-out wah.

Throaty Drive flips the toggle to COMP COLOUR, with Drive maxed and the Comp Colour (Envelope Amount) knob up at 8. This is the setting that got me hooked. It has this honky, throaty frequency response that, combined with the sponginess of the compressor and drive stacking, lands right in the neighborhood of the more recent Queens of the Stone Age albums, think Villains and In Times New Roman…. Cocked Wah stays in COMP COLOUR too, but with the Comp Colour knob pulled back to 3, so the Filter knob’s frequency boost just plants a fixed, wah-like peak in the signal instead of sweeping it: the classic parked-wah trick without touching your feet. Squeezed Attack goes the other direction, Drive down at 2 and the Comp Colour knob maxed at 10, for a heavily compressed, squeezed-down attack with the drive mostly out of the picture.

Kinematic vs The Postman

The Postman is Poison Noises’ dedicated envelope filter, and it’s the more purpose-built auto-wah of the two: five knobs plus a toggle, all committed to shaping just the filter sweep. The Kinematic’s filter side runs on only two controls, Filter and Envelope Amount, split across its two modes, so on its own it’s a shallower auto-wah. What the Kinematic has that the Postman doesn’t is the COMP COLOUR mode, a genuine VCA compressor with its own frequency-boost tone stage, plus the post-filter Drive knob for overdrive on top. If a deep, dedicated funk auto-wah is the only job, the Postman goes further. If you want one box that also compresses and drives, the Kinematic covers more ground.

Who It’s For

Funk, disco, and modern desert-rock and stoner players chasing that honky, driven QOTSA-style tone are the sweet spot, especially since Drive and COMP COLOUR mode mean you don’t need a separate compressor or grit pedal to get there. It also works for synths and drum machines, since the CV patch points make it genuinely Eurorack-friendly, so modular players get real mileage out of it too.

If all you want is a wide-open, deeply tweakable auto-wah, the two-knob filter side here might feel a little limited, and a dedicated envelope filter like the Postman will serve you better. If you want an auto-wah, a compressor, and a drive pedal that can cross-pollinate, all in one small footprint, the Kinematic earns its keep.

Specs

• Analog VCA compressor and envelope filter circuit, for guitar, bass, synths, and drum machines
• Controls: Filter Cutoff Frequency, Drive, Level, Envelope Amount, and a COMP COLOUR / ENV FILTER mode switch
• CMOS bypass with a soft-touch footswitch
• Three CV patch points (Filter, Level, EG Out) on 3.5 mm mini jacks for Eurorack and modular integration
• Audio I/O: mono TS jacks, accepts up to 2Vpp input
• Power: 9V DC, Boss-style center-negative 2.1mm jack (not included), 85mA current draw
• Size: 14 x 10 x 5.6 cm

Signal Chain

• Fidelity Guitars Stellarosa Lite II with Lollar Firebird pickups (bridge pickup)
• Kinematic
• Mixwave Benson Chimera Plugin*
• A bit of room-like reverb from the Valhalla Vintage Verb plugin

Where to Buy

Buy now, brag later Snag one here Treat yo' self

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Get detailed specs on Dreadbox FX's website

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