Rainger FX Snare Trap - Rhythm Device

The Snare Trap is a drum machine you play guitar or synth/keyboards through! It’s designed to be used either on the desktop – by hand – or on the floor – by foot. The drum sounds are bass drum, snare, and hi-hat, and these can be individually triggered externally by a CV – so it’s very useful for modular synthesists.

More video demos:

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It has handy shortcuts to get a beat going quickly, plus a bunch of inspiring features and effects, including delay, low-pass filter (manual or LFO-controlled), side-chaining and correctible tap tempo. There’s a pad for adding drumfills and white noise effects, which also doubles up for inputting a tempo.

Sounds

The Snare Trap is an analogue/digital hybrid, and creates the sounds itself internally – no pre-recorded samples. With the tap tempo, delay, and the white noise part of the snare and hi-hat all being digital, the bass drum, shaping of the snare and hi-hat, the low-pass filter and side-chain circuit are all analogue.

The main snare drum is always on the ‘2’ and the ‘4’, but the delay effect moves ghost snare beats wherever you want. There’s wet or dry options, plus the shape of the snare hit can be adjusted – adding a handclap-like effect. Snare fills (and white noise bursts) can be added live with the main pad.

The first bass drum is always on the ‘1’ (the most important accent – as Bootsy says!), while the second (there are two) can be moved anywhere. The snare Trap can do any kind of swing feel you want.

The hi-hat is either 8-to-the-bar, or 4, but on the offbeat.

The tap tempo

The tap tempo is correctible (the same as the one used in the Deep Space Pulsar), which means that with one or more correcting taps on the main pad the tempo can be adjusted to sync with other tracks or instruments for long periods.

The Snare Trap is fantastic for any electric instrumentalist who plays to a beat, where live drums aren’t convenient. The beat and your instrument are blended together – so the Snare Trap is great for single-input amplifiers. There’s a ‘hi/lo’ input switch to cope with the higher signal levels from active instruments and keyboards. It runs off a regular 9v pedal power supply.

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The Snare Trap is a drum box sketch pad, a rhythmic backing track configured to inspire musicians of all kinds. It incorporates a bunch of effects to enhance and transform the beat, and uses useful shortcuts to help quickly create your drum track.

It’s a hybrid of analogue and digital technology; the bass drum, sidechaining and low-pass filter are all analogue, while the snare and hi-hat, delay and tap tempo are all digital.

CONTROLS

SHAPE: In the ‘snare’ section, this adjusts the length of the snare sound, making the snare short and sharp, or with a handclap-like thickening.

DRY: This button switches the snare from roomy-sounding to more hard and dry.

HH 4s: The Snare Trap defaults to ‘8s’ on the hi-hat, but push this button in and it does only off-beat ‘4s’.

BD2: With this knob at fully CCW, the second bass drum is on ‘3’. Turning it CW moves this drum later and later, at one point it’s so late it happens in the following beat — in effect happening earlier in the bar; this way BD2 can be adjusted to go anywhere in the bar.

SEND: In the ‘delay’ section, this knob is turned to send the snare — only — to the delay circuit.

RATE: The knob adjusts the timing of the repeats.

FBK: This adjusts the amount of delay feedback.

INSTR SIDE CHAIN: This pushbutton activates the side chain effect on the instrument that’s plugged into the Snare Trap input.

CUT OFF: This large knob adjusts the cut off frequency of the low-pass filter.

LFO RATE: this changes the speed of the LFO that automatically sweeps the cut off frequency
up and down.

ON: This blue pushbutton activates the LFO.

PAD: This pushbutton changes the operating mode of the big rubber pad, from tap tempo programming to snare drum fills and white noise bursts.

MIX: This large knob adjusts the blend between all instrument (CVV) to all beats (CCW).

VOLUME: This knob adjusts the overall output volume.

LEDs: The left LED shows the unit is getting power OK. The middle is the tempo indicator, and the right one shows the LFO speed.

SOCKETS

IN: Connect your mono 1/4” jackplug instrument cable here

(SYNC OUT): this minijack socket outputs the Snare Trap tap tempo pulse to any external unit.

I/P Hi/Lo: this pushbutton attenuates the input signal volume, to accommodate high-output instruments (eg synthesizers)

DC in: Connect 9v power supply unit here (centre earth, sleeve +9v).

‘Trigger in’ sockets: these minijack sockets can be used to trigger BD, SN and HH sounds externally.

OUT: these 1/4” and minijack sockets output the same mono signal

ABOUT THE TAP TEMPO

The Snare Trap has an incredibly useable — and ground-breaking - tap tempo. It’s possible to sync by ear so the unit works in time to an external music source for several minutes.

With the ‘PAD’ switch pushed in, tap the big rubber pad and the ‘4s’ LED will come on steadily — showing the pedal is recording your tempo. Tap the pad again and the LED will go off, but continue flashing at the tempo you just programmed. This tempo can be adjusted at any time; you can tap it once or as many times as you want to correct the tempo.

To erase the tempo, press and hold the pad for one long second.

* if you try and correct the tap tempo to a very different speed the circuit may get confused! In this situation it’s best to erase it and start again.

** The Snare Trap uses about 65mA