CARTRIDGE

Overview

CARTRIDGE is a clean-room emulation of the legendary FV-1 DSP chip that powers countless boutique guitar pedals, brought into your DAW as a programmable effects engine rather than a single fixed effect. It runs real, arbitrary program banks across 8 swappable slots, and you shape each one with the same three POT knobs you’d turn on the hardware. The engine runs internally at the chip’s authentic 32.768 kHz rate with 24-bit fixed-point math, modeled saturation, and the 14-bit compressed-float delay RAM that gives the chip its signature dark, grainy tail — character that’s preserved, not “fixed.” Two factory banks ship on board: a Stock bank of eight original programs (Hall, Spring, Chorus, Flanger, Tremolo, Pitch, Echo, Shimmer) and a Classics bank of genuine published ROM programs with full author attribution. Load your own .hex or .bin banks, and switch programs glitch-free mid-performance.

7 parameters. 16 programs out of the box. One authentic chip.

Features

• Real FV-1 Engine — A clean-room interpreter executes genuine 128-instruction FV-1 programs once per sample at the chip’s native 32.768 kHz, not an approximation of one fixed effect.
• Authentic Lo-Fi Character — 24-bit fixed-point arithmetic, exact rounding and saturation, and 14-bit compressed-float delay RAM reproduce the chip’s darkness and reverb-tail grain as a feature, not a flaw.
• 8-Slot Cartridge Bank — Switch instantly between eight banked programs with real-time-safe, click-free fade swaps that leave the delay RAM intact, exactly like the hardware.
• Three Smart POT Knobs — POT 0–2 map straight to the chip’s control registers; labels re-print per program (DECAY, RATE, FEEDBACK, SHIMMER) and ghost out when a program ignores them.
• Two Factory Banks — Stock delivers eight original reverbs, modulations, pitch and echo programs; Classics ships genuine published ROM programs with per-program attribution.
• Load Your Own Patches — Drag and drop .hex or .bin banks into a persistent, unlimited user library with optional JSON metadata for custom knob labels.
• DAW-Ready I/O — Stereo, Mono-Sum and Left-to-Both input routing handles mono pedal patches and true-stereo programs; a built-in, latency-compensated Dry/Wet adds the mix control the chip never had.

What People Say

“I’ve got a drawer full of pedals built on this chip, and CARTRIDGE nails the exact dusty, dark reverb tail I chase. Loading my own SpinCAD banks straight into the session is a cheat code.”

— Devon Marsh, ambient producer & pedal builder