Lumen - Hungry Robot

May 23 2021
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hungry robot lumen

The Lumen by Hungry Robot is a unique and original overdrive circuit.

The clipping is realized by cascading JFET gain stages, which gives it a very natural, tube-like overdrive. The real twist comes from the three diagonally arranged knobs. They are active state variable filters. They don't cut tone from the original signal, but amplify certain frequencies.

We get a low, high and band (mids) pass. The fact that these amplify the signal at certain frequencies becomes very apparent when you turn the band pass knob. It seems to be very interactive with the overall gain of the pedal. Turning the mids up with the band pass knob seems to increase saturation.

Additionally, there is a clean blend knob on the Lumen. It lets you control the ratio between driven and clean signal. Blending in more cleans is very different to turning down the gain. You get to keep the saturated tone, but you can add back some clean signal to get more clarity and note defintion.

It has a very preampy feel to it and I assume it would work wonderfully on bass as well.

The Lumen is extremely useful, sounds great and is designed beautifully with its tall box and giant knobs.

Signal Chain

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