DivKid’s Square Pedal Test: West Coast Chaos in a Box

DivKid kicks off by calling The Square the strangest pedal in his arsenal—high praise, considering his synth cave. The Square doesn’t just process your synth; it transforms humble monos and polys into wild, west coast monsters. Plug in a vanilla sine wave and you’re suddenly playing with Buchla-grade complex oscillator tones. It’s the sort of pedal that could make a pocket calculator sound like it’s plotting to take over Berlin.

The video teases that this isn’t just another box of clangy ring-mod misery. Instead, The Square delivers that elusive west coast vibe, morphing simple signals into evolving, FM-laced, folded soundscapes. DivKid’s excitement is obvious, and if you like your synths to get weird, you’re in for a treat. But trust me—words don’t do those sound examples justice. You’ll want to hear the pedal snarl for yourself.

Forget everything you know about ring modulators. The Square ditches the usual two-input setup and runs your signal into both the carrier and modulator paths, squaring your sound in every sense. This means no static carrier frequency to fight with—just your synth, multiplied and mangled in glorious analogue fashion. It’s inspired by the old EMS diode ring mods, but with a twist that makes it far more musical and less likely to send you running for earplugs.

Instead of metallic dissonance, you get harmonic grit and blooming overtones. The circuit’s germanium diodes and clever routing add their own brand of filth, giving you everything from subtle saturation to full-on west coast chaos. It’s simple, it’s brutal, and it doesn’t care if you’re playing a mono bleep or a lush chord. The pedal rewards anything you throw at it, especially when you start stacking oscillators.

DivKid proves The Square isn’t picky about its diet. Whether he’s feeding it a basic arpeggiated poly synth or a single-oscillator mono line with delay, the pedal spits out intricate, noisy, and oddly controlled textures. It’s not just distortion—there’s a weird, almost modular cross-mod thing happening that keeps things musical even when the sounds get gnarly.

This versatility means The Square works with everything from vintage Roland monos to modern polys. Play overlapping notes, stack intervals, or just use a simple saw—every approach results in a fresh pile of west coast gold. The best part? The pedal keeps the noise in check, decaying away without the usual hiss, letting the grit shine without turning your mix into a swamp. It’s a rare combo: aggressive, but still playable.

Here’s where DivKid gets sneaky. The Square loves overlapping notes—so if you’ve only got a mono synth, slap on a delay and let the echoes collide. Suddenly, your single-oscillator line starts behaving like a polyphonic modular patch, with the pedal chewing through the stacked signals and spitting out complex, folding harmonics.

He also shows off tricks with input volume and rhythm, teasing out everything from soft, haunting textures to raw, roaring noise. The pedal isn’t just about brute force; it responds to subtle changes and rewards experimentation. Want more chewiness? Tweak your delays, layer your notes, and let the circuit do its thing. But honestly, you need to hear these tricks in action—the video is packed with examples that text just can’t capture.