Glou-Glou unleashes its highly formidable PiLuLe Phase Locked Loop Fuzz Harmonizer

Glou-Glou’s Olivier Armbruster often hits me up for a launch - where I participated in the STAKE launch - indeed I helped write the Press Release for that. And I also participated significantly for the Flanger Series releases. While this time around he’s kind of sneaked this one past me - so not sure what’s going on there. There has been a spate of these sorts of things this year - with a few builders somewhat negligent in my direction. People that I call friends - and have worked very amicably with previously! I’m not always clear on the reasons for my exile!

There is no doubt about Olivier’s High Fidelity Delivery - he makes some truly fantastic devices - but seems to compete with Gamechanger Audio - as to who can produce the largest unit. I’ve always felt Olivier’s pedals were a little large for domestic and touring use - and were very much the domain of high-fidelity / audiophile studios. One Glou-Glou pedal will replace an entire group of compacts or mid-size units - Glou-Glou always supersizes!

This PiLuLe is actually relative conservatively scaled - but is still large, albeit not near so large as the others, including the Moutarde - for which I believe the PiLuLe is a sort of distillation of that pedal - which was doing the rounds about 6 years or so ago!

I am personally quite the fan of the Shumann PLL Fuzz Harmonizer - while I typically favour more compact models. I have about about half-a-dozen PLL’s to date - and my favourite takes are Beetronics’ Swarm, and Tark Audio’s SquidInk - the latter is a particularly impressive engineering project - simplifying the overall topology and giving you more stability in deployment.

The PLL is generally regarded as a somewhat unruly affair - and it can often be tricky to tame for the average layman. EQD’s Data Corrupter is another well-known example - but still somewhat over-sized as far as I’m concerned.

Controls - Dry Switch (Add Clean into Mix) , Low Switch (Low Notes Stabilizer), Level (Output), PLL / Fuzz (Main Gain), Sustain (Pre-Gain), Compression (Pre-Gain), Dynamics Switch (Restores Dynamics), Range (Frequency Range), Octaves (0-5), Scoop Switch (Cuts Mids), Speed (PLL Reaction), Lag / Waveshaper, Filter / Stability.

You can guarantee that Olivier’s PiLuLe is full of flavour and wonderful textures - and indeed you have a lots of controls at your finger tips - or 13 in total - sort of Sinvertek territory - but on a much bigger format.

For sake of comparison the SquidInk has 9 controls with dual footswitches, and the Swarm has 7 - where by contrast - the original Schumann PLL had 15, and there’s a version by FTelettrpnica which has 25 controls and 4 x footswtiches.

I always say you need to find your lane for that works for you - and it can be a mix of several different criteria - and with different emphasis for different genres. Relatively speaking the PiLuLe is pretty reasonable on the control topology side - while its overall footprint is somewhat larger than I’m comfortable with - albeit not as large as Glou-Glou’s typical output.

There are fortunately several players that favour the bigger boxes - and I’ve not doubt there will be plenty of takers for this PiLuLe - which goes for exactly €300 on the Glou-Glou Webstore. Meaning that this is likely to do really well! It’s actual dimensions aren’t overly large at 17 x 13 x 5cmm.