There is a moment, documented in dozens of bedroom-studio videos from 2021 onward, where a guitarist plays a single sustained note into the Hologram Electronics Microcosm and then looks up at the camera with an expression that sits somewhere between confusion and religious awe. The pedal has taken that note and turned it into something else entirely — a cascading micro-loop that fractures the original pitch across time, a granular cloud of pitch-shifted debris, a glitchy stutter that locks perfectly to a tempo the player never programmed. The note the guitarist played and the sound the Microcosm produced are related by ancestry only. This is not a delay pedal that happens to have a reverb. This is something different in kind.
Hologram Electronics has been making that point since 2015, when Jason Campbell and Ryan Schaefer launched the company from Knoxville, Tennessee. Campbell came from engineering; Schaefer from software design and his band Royal Bangs. Their premise was simple and still sounds radical: build pedals that do what synthesizers, computers, and racks of academic signal-processing gear do, but put them in a single stomp box on a guitar rig. The Dream Sequence, their debut (January 2016), combined rhythmic delay with octave shifting to generate arpeggiated, hypnotic patterns. The Infinite Jets Resynthesizer followed — it continuously captured and extended notes into swelling, indefinite sustain layered with fuzz. By the time the Microcosm arrived in 2021, Hologram had already trained a generation of players to expect the unexpected from a boutique Tennessee stomp box company.
The Microcosm is their most complete statement. It is not the easiest pedal ever made. But in the world of ambient guitar, glitch composition, and experimental electronics, it has become something close to the default piece of equipment — the one that shows up in rig photos, pedalboard walkthroughs, and studio session credits with a frequency that suggests genuine consensus rather than hype.
From Knoxville to the Pedalboard of Radiohead’s Guitarist
Hologram Electronics operates at the intersection of boutique pedal culture and academic synthesis research. The company does not produce cheap products — every circuit is designed and built in Knoxville — and its catalogue has remained deliberately small. Four pedals in roughly a decade, each one a statement. When the Microcosm appeared in 2021 it arrived with full granular synthesis capability, a 60-second phrase looper, MIDI synchronisation, and eleven distinct algorithms, each with multiple preset variations. The price at launch was $459 USD, which it has held to this day.
The name is precise. A microcosm is a world in miniature — a contained system that reflects, in small, the patterns of a larger one. The pedal genuinely works this way. Feed it any signal — guitar, synthesizer, bass, vocals, drum machine — and it applies granular sampling algorithms that slice the input into tiny fragments, manipulate those fragments in pitch, time, and spectral character, and reassemble them according to the logic of the algorithm currently active. The output is related to the input in the same way a painting is related to its subject. You recognise the original. But something has happened to it.
Specifications
How the Algorithms Actually Work
The Microcosm’s eleven effects are grouped into four categories that describe the dominant technique being applied, though in practice every algorithm layers multiple processes simultaneously. Understanding the categories is the fastest way to understand why the pedal sounds the way it does.
Micro Loop captures short segments of the incoming signal and loops them continuously while applying pitch and time manipulation. Mosaic stacks multiple micro-loops at different transpositions, building a chord from a single note input. Seq arranges the loops into a rhythmic sequence — effectively an arpeggiator built from slices of your own playing. Glide morphs smoothly between different loop pitches, creating the continuous-pitch sliding that defines much of the pedal’s signature ambient vocabulary.
Granules operates in the classical granular synthesis domain, breaking the input into thousands of tiny audio grains and processing each one independently. Haze diffuses the grains into a soft, atmospheric wash — the most immediately usable ambient algorithm for anyone who wants a quick shimmer-and-fog sound. Tunnel creates a more focused, tonal granular texture with a sense of depth and direction. Strum applies granular processing in a way that mimics the articulation of string resonance — useful, counterintuitively, for making a single-note guitar line sound like a textured chord.
Glitch is where the pedal’s more aggressive, rhythm-oriented personality appears. Blocks chops the signal into discrete segments and rearranges them according to the Time and Activity parameters. Interrupt creates sudden, unpredictable signal interruptions that can either stutter rhythmically or behave more chaotically depending on knob settings. Arp applies a pitch-arpeggiation algorithm to the glitch engine, producing melodic fragments that cycle through intervals defined by the Shape control.
MultiDelay contains the two algorithms that operate most recognisably as delay-type effects, though neither sounds like a conventional delay pedal. Pattern creates rhythmic delay patterns that can be synced to MIDI clock or tap tempo, with the Repeats control determining whether the repetitions decay normally or stack into a dense accumulation. Warp applies pitch modulation to the delayed signal in real time, producing the frequency-shifting delay character associated with certain vintage tape-based units but with far more deliberate control.
On top of all of this sits the Hold sampler, which freezes the current effect and pattern at any moment by holding the effect footswitch. The 60-second phrase looper operates independently of or in series with the effect section, depending on the pre-FX or looper-only configuration. MIDI clock sync locks the Time parameter to an external source. The expression pedal input can be assigned to virtually any control parameter, which means the entire textural palette of the pedal can be swept in real time with a foot.
Eight knobs control the shape of whatever algorithm is active. Activity sets the density or rate of the granular/loop process — on Mosaic it controls how many simultaneous micro-loops are running; on Blocks it controls how frequently the chop interrupts. Shape adjusts the algorithm’s primary character parameter — transposition interval, grain size, pitch morph depth. Filter is a resonant lowpass, sweepable across the full audio spectrum. Mix sets wet/dry ratio. Time sets loop or delay length, synced or free. Repeats determines feedback or decay. Space controls the reverb depth. Loop Level sets the looper independently of the effect mix. These are not conventional destination parameters — they behave differently depending on which algorithm is active — which is why the Microcosm requires investment to master, and why mastering it produces results that sound like nobody else.
Famous Players
Ed O’Brien of Radiohead is the highest-profile documented Microcosm user in the rock world. O’Brien has always built his guitar role around texture, architecture, and sound design rather than melodic lead playing, and his relationship with Hologram Electronics predates the Microcosm — he has spoken in interviews about his Infinite Jets (“I love that thing, it’s like an amazing synthesizer”). The Microcosm appeared on his 2025 touring pedalboard, designed and documented by The GigRig, who built and filmed the full Radiohead touring setup. For a band whose sonic identity is inseparable from complex layering and processed guitar texture, it is precisely the kind of tool that fits — not as a novelty but as a serious compositional instrument.
Nick Reinhart of Tera Melos, one of the most consequential avant-garde guitarists of the past twenty years, has publicly endorsed the Microcosm in direct terms. In a September 2022 interview with Fecking Bahamas — one of the most reliable primary sources for serious boutique pedal coverage — Reinhart was asked which recent pedals had blown his mind. His response named the Meris LVX, the Boss SY-1000, and then: “hologram electronics microcosm was great.” This is Reinhart’s own unprompted assessment, not a sponsored statement. Tera Melos have spent two decades weaponising the unexpected in live performance; when their principal guitarist calls something “great” in the same breath as two other technically extreme pedals, it carries weight. Reinhart is not in the guitarist feature database on this site, but his assessment stands as one of the clearest practitioner endorsements the Microcosm has received from the math-rock and experimental guitar world.
Andy Othling (performing as Lowercase Noises) is perhaps the single most influential ambassador for the Microcosm in the ambient guitar community. Othling is the most widely followed ambient guitar educator and demonstrator on YouTube, with a practice built on demonstrating exactly the kind of texture-first, harmony-ambient guitar playing for which the Microcosm is architecturally suited. His demonstrations of the pedal — including extended real-time explorations in his regular streaming sessions — introduced the Microcosm to a large portion of its current user base. Othling’s analysis is methodical: he maps algorithms to musical contexts, documents how the knob parameters interact, and shows the pedal’s range from subtle background shimmer to complete signal transformation. He is not in this site’s guitarist feature database, but his role in establishing the Microcosm’s cultural position in ambient guitar is unambiguous.
Beyond these three, the Microcosm has accumulated a significant documented user base across the experimental, post-rock, electronic, and ambient production worlds. Equipboard lists 57 professional artists using the pedal as of mid-2026 — a substantial number for a boutique unit at this price point. The pattern is consistent: players who build sound architectures rather than execute conventional guitar parts, and producers who treat the guitar signal as raw synthesis material rather than a fixed-timbre melodic source.
Tone Recipes and Settings
Recipe 1: Glacial Shimmer (Granules / Haze)
Set the algorithm to Haze in the Granules category. Activity at 9 o’clock (low grain density — you want wisps, not a cloud). Shape at noon (default grain character). Filter fully open. Mix at 3 o’clock (wet-dominant but not fully wet — preserve some attack from the dry signal). Time at 2 o’clock. Repeats at 10 o’clock. Space at 2 o’clock (generous reverb to soften grain boundaries). Play slow, sustained single notes or open-string drones. The Haze algorithm will build a diffuse ambient wash above and around each note that sustains independently of your pick attack. This is the setting that made the pedal famous in ambient guitar circles — it does in one knob sweep what previously required a pitch-shimmer reverb, a delay, and a separate convolution reverb running simultaneously.
Recipe 2: Rhythmic Micro-Loop Arp (Micro Loop / Seq)
Algorithm: Seq. Activity at noon (moderate sequence density). Shape at 2 o’clock (wider transposition spread). Filter at 11 o’clock (gentle high-frequency roll-off softens the stabs). Mix at 2 o’clock. Time: tap to your tempo or sync via MIDI. Repeats at 1 o’clock. Space at 10 o’clock (light reverb, you don’t want to obscure the rhythmic definition). With a clean, picked guitar input, the Seq algorithm captures micro-slices of your playing and sequences them in a rhythm that relates to the Time parameter. Play slow, deliberate notes and let the pedal build the forward momentum. This is the setting for building post-rock-style textural motion without needing a rhythm-section arrangement underneath.
Recipe 3: Glitch Percussion (Glitch / Blocks)
Algorithm: Blocks. Activity at 3 o’clock (high chop density). Shape at noon. Filter at 2 o’clock (some treble roll-off rounds the edges). Mix at 3 o’clock. Time synced to MIDI clock or tapped. Repeats at 9 o’clock (minimal feedback — you want chops, not accumulation). Space at 9 o’clock (dry-ish). Strike hard, single-string or chord stabs and let the Blocks algorithm rearrange the impact into rhythmic patterns. This produces a sound closer to IDM production than guitar playing — the connection to your original gesture is percussive and rhythmic rather than melodic. Useful in a full-band context for adding an electronic-production layer to an otherwise conventional rock arrangement.
Recipe 4: Pitch-Drift Drone (Micro Loop / Glide)
Algorithm: Glide. Activity at 11 o’clock. Shape at 2 o’clock (wide pitch morph range). Filter at noon. Mix at fully wet (12 or 1 o’clock). Time at 2 o’clock (slow morph rate). Repeats at 2 o’clock (allow accumulation). Space at 3 o’clock (heavy reverb tail). Sustain a single note or chord and step back. The Glide algorithm will begin morphing the micro-loops through pitch space, producing a slowly evolving drone that drifts away from the original pitch centre. Activate the Hold function to freeze the current state. Suitable for film scoring, installation audio, and the kind of guitar playing that is explicitly not guitar playing.
Recipe 5: Pattern Delay (MultiDelay / Pattern) with Expression Control
Algorithm: Pattern with MIDI clock sync. Activity at 11 o’clock. Shape at 1 o’clock (asymmetric delay pattern). Filter at 1 o’clock (slight high-cut on repeats to mimic tape behaviour). Mix at noon (equal wet/dry). Time synced. Repeats at 1 o’clock. Space at noon. Plug an expression pedal into the expression input and assign it to the Mix parameter. This turns the Microcosm’s delay into a performance tool: clean at heel, fully processed at toe. At intermediate expression positions the clean and processed signals blend in ways that vary the apparent rhythmic complexity of the part. This is the Microcosm operating as a conventional creative delay — but one with far more rhythmic intelligence than anything built from a standard echo unit.
Comparisons and Where the Microcosm Sits in the Wider Rig
The Microcosm is not a modeller in the sense that the Line 6 Helix Floor, Neural DSP Quad Cortex, Kemper Profiler Head, or Fractal Audio Axe-Fx III Mark II are modellers. Those devices replace or replicate amplifiers, speaker cabinets, and conventional signal chains. The Microcosm does not model anything — it transforms. The more accurate comparison class is creative effects units, where its nearest neighbours are the Empress Zoia (modular effects environment), the Strymon Magneto, and — within Hologram’s own range — the newer Chroma Console. Against the Zoia, the Microcosm wins on focus: the Zoia’s open modular architecture means infinite possibility at the cost of extended programming time; the Microcosm’s eleven algorithms give immediate access to very specific sounds. Against the Chroma Console (Hologram’s most recent multi-effects unit, released after the Microcosm), the comparison is more direct — the Console adds MIDI-controllable filter and gain stages and is positioned as a more studio-complete processing environment, while the Microcosm remains focused specifically on granular and looping effects. Running the Microcosm in front of a Fender Deluxe Reverb with the Deluxe’s reverb fully engaged produces a compound ambient architecture — the Microcosm’s algorithmic processing feeding into the Deluxe’s mechanical spring reverb — that neither piece of equipment achieves independently.
The Microcosm’s position in a signal chain matters. Most players run it last in the chain, post-overdrive and post-modulation, to give the algorithms the cleanest possible processed signal. But Hologram explicitly designed the unit’s input as a TRS mono/stereo hybrid, meaning it can receive a stereo signal from a stereo effects chain and output stereo throughout. This makes it viable as a studio insert across a full stereo mix bus, not only as a guitar-specific stomp. In a recording context, many producers use it on vocals, synths, and drum room channels — the algorithms have no particular interest in whether the input is a guitar or a Rhodes.
Buying Guide
The Microcosm sells new at $459 USD direct from hologramelectronics.com and from authorised international dealers. Hologram Electronics is a boutique operation and does not manufacture to retail-channel inventory levels, which means stock at any given moment is limited. The product page carries a “ships within 2 business days” note when available, but the Microcosm has sold out for extended periods since launch; if you see it in stock, the decision timeline is shorter than it would be for a mass-market pedal.
Used units appear on Reverb and eBay in the $300–$380 USD range. The Microcosm has no mechanical failures commonly reported in the used-market community — the construction quality reflects the price point. The only meaningful used-market caveat is firmware version: earlier units shipped with less developed presets and fewer parameter-mapping options for the expression input. Firmware updates are applied via a firmware file downloaded from hologramelectronics.com and installed through the MIDI input using a specific key-press-at-power-on sequence documented in the user manual. It is not difficult but it requires a MIDI interface and a computer; confirm the current firmware before buying used.
The 16 user preset slots save both the algorithm settings and the current phrase looper content. This is a genuinely useful feature for live performance: you can store a pre-built ambient loop alongside the effect settings that generated it and recall both with a single preset step. The 60-second looper operates at sufficient audio quality for performance use. At $459 new, the Microcosm is expensive for a single-purpose effects pedal by mass-market standards. Relative to what it does — which has no single-unit equivalent in the conventional pedal market — it is competitive with its boutique contemporaries.
Ownership Notes
The Microcosm’s learning curve is genuine and worth acknowledging honestly. The eight knobs do not behave consistently across algorithms — Activity on Haze is not the same control as Activity on Blocks. The first hour with the pedal should involve systematic exploration of each algorithm in order, with knobs at noon, before any settings are saved. The user manual is printed and included in the box, and Hologram’s blog section on hologramelectronics.com carries tutorial posts on individual algorithms. Both resources are worth reading before the first gig use.
Power: 9VDC centre-negative, 250mA minimum draw. The included supply works; on a populated pedalboard, feed the Microcosm from an isolated output on a quality power supply (Strymon Zuma, Cioks DC7, MXR Iso-Brick or equivalent). It can show noise susceptibility on non-isolated power outputs sharing a rail with digital modellers or MIDI controllers.
The True Bypass/Buffered bypass switch is located on the interior circuit board and requires opening the unit to change — it is not a rear-panel toggle. Choose your bypass mode at purchase based on your signal chain requirements and leave it. If you run a long cable run or a buffer-less chain, buffered bypass with trails is the correct configuration for ambient playing; the trails setting allows the effect tail to decay naturally when you disengage the pedal rather than cutting immediately.
Stereo operation is straightforward: the single TRS input accepts a TRS stereo source or a TS mono source (it auto-detects). The L/mono and R outputs carry independent stereo channels. Running the Microcosm into two amps or two channels of a mixing desk produces genuinely wide stereo images on the algorithms that generate stereo-divergent processing — Haze and Mosaic in particular place different granular material in each channel.
FAQ
Is the Microcosm suitable for playing live, or is it mainly a studio tool?
It is a live tool with strong studio credentials. Ed O’Brien of Radiohead carries one on his touring pedalboard. The 16 user preset slots, tap tempo, MIDI clock sync, and Hold sampler are all performance-oriented features. The learning curve means you should practice with your specific algorithm/preset selections before using it in a live context, but there is nothing about the hardware or design that restricts it to studio use.
What is the difference between the Microcosm and the Hologram Chroma Console?
The Chroma Console is Hologram’s multi-effects unit, released after the Microcosm, and covers a broader signal-processing canvas including gain staging, filtering, and modulation effects in addition to granular and looping functions. The Microcosm is specifically a granular effects and looper unit — deeper and more focused within its domain. They are complementary rather than redundant; some players use both.
Can the Microcosm be used with non-guitar instruments?
Yes. The input accepts any line-level or instrument-level signal from a TRS mono or stereo source. Keyboards, synthesizers, bass guitars, drum machines, and even vocal signals processed through a DI are all documented use cases. The algorithms respond to harmonic content and dynamics but are not calibrated specifically for guitar-range frequencies.
Does it have a built-in tuner?
No. The Microcosm is an effects and looping unit with no tuner function. Plan accordingly in your signal chain — a tuner before the Microcosm is standard practice.
How does MIDI clock sync work in practice?
The Microcosm receives MIDI clock from any MIDI master device — DAW, MIDI sequencer, drum machine, or MIDI controller — via the five-pin DIN MIDI Input. When clock is received, the Time parameter locks to a subdivision of the incoming tempo. This is the recommended configuration for any live or studio context where the Microcosm needs to stay rhythmically aligned with other instruments or a DAW session. Tap tempo functions identically but manually.
What does the Hold function actually do?
Hold freezes the current state of the effect — whatever the algorithm has generated at the moment you press and hold the effect footswitch. The frozen material sustains indefinitely while you continue playing through the dry signal. Released, the pedal returns to live processing. In practice, Hold turns the Microcosm into a drone generator: build a texture, freeze it, improvise over the top. It is one of the most musically useful features on the unit and the one that appears most frequently in demonstration footage.
Is the Microcosm worth the price compared to software equivalents?
Granular synthesis plugins in a DAW (Max/MSP, Ableton’s built-in granular instruments, Unfiltered Audio Silo, GRM Spaces) can produce comparable and in some ways more configurable results — and cost less. The Microcosm’s value is tactile, immediate, and hardware-native: it processes any live input in real time without a computer in the chain, the eight knobs respond to physical touch, and the algorithms are pre-engineered to produce musically coherent results without programming knowledge. For stage use and instrument-first creative workflows, it is not meaningfully comparable to software. For studio sound design where the DAW is already running, the comparison is closer.
Does the Microcosm work well with high-gain or distorted signals?
The granular algorithms interact with complex, harmonically dense signals in ways that can produce either beautiful smear or uncontrolled noise depending on the algorithm and settings. Haze and Glide handle overdriven signals reasonably gracefully. Blocks and Interrupt applied to a full-gain signal can collapse into feedback chaos — which some players want and others do not. Most players in heavy contexts run the Microcosm post-overdrive and use it specifically for clean-channel ambient sections. Running it in an effects loop after an amplifier’s preamp stage maintains the gain character while giving the granular algorithms a more controlled harmonic input to work with.