TAETRO’s Sidekick Hack: Parallel FX Mayhem Unleashed

TAETRO opens this quick-fire episode by admitting he completely overlooked a killer Sidekick feature until a viewer piped up. The bombshell? You can use the cue out to send audio to an external effect and return it via the aux input – a trick that’s not even in the original review. Sometimes the real power moves come straight from the comment section, not the manual.

With a nod to his audience’s ingenuity, TAETRO gets straight to work patching this setup. The Sidekick’s secondary output – usually a DJ’s cue – is about to get a serious promotion. This isn’t about splitting hairs, it’s about splitting signals and letting your FX pedal of choice work in parallel. If you’re the kind who loves discovering ‘hidden’ features, this is your jam.

Here’s where things get spicy. By routing the cue out to a pedal (in this case, the Hologram Microcosm) and returning it via the aux input, you’re not just slapping effects on your whole mix – you’re building a parallel FX bus. That means clean and dirty, wet and dry, all under your iron-fisted control.

TAETRO demos this with the OP-1 Field running a bell sequence, then brings in the Microcosm for some ‘sparkly magic’. The real trick? You can blend as much processed signal as you want, without drowning your original sound. It’s a classic trick from the studio world, now portable and ready for your next toaster-fight jam.

Using the cue send as a dedicated FX send and the AUX return as your personal effects lane means you don’t just add reverb or delay – you sculpt it. TAETRO points out that you can control exactly how much of your sound hits the pedal, not just how loud the effect comes back. Pull down the original channel and you’re left with pure pedal echoes, floating in the mix.

There’s more: if you’re running the Sidekick into your DAW via USB, you can record the aux track as a separate channel. That’s surgical mix control, letting you tweak pedal madness in post or sample it for later. The cue/AUX combo isn’t just a routing quirk – it’s a creative superpower.

TAETRO doesn’t just talk – he shows. After the FX demo, he experiments with pitch and tape effects, recording automation for extra unpredictability. The Sidekick’s aux return picks up every twist, so even pitched-down weirdness gets the full pedal treatment. Want your dreamy jams to sound like they’ve been dragged through a VHS nightmare? This setup’s got you covered.

But don’t just take our word for it: seeing – and hearing – how the routing transforms the OP-1’s clean bell sequence into a lush, evolving soundscape is the real highlight. If you’re after fresh inspiration or stuck in a creative rut, this trick will give you a kick where it counts.