Grace Design products are renowned for their excellent technical performance, rugged build quality and practical feature sets. Their latest offerings, Rex and Roxi, each house one of the company’s mic preamps in a pedal enclosure along with EQ, boost and effects loop facilities, providing vocalists and instrumentalists with a high-quality solution for the stage as well as the studio.
Rex
Rex is the smaller of the two pedals, and offers a XLR microphone input equipped with 48V phantom power and a switchable 75Hz high-pass filter. Some onboard tone-shaping is provided by high- and low-shelf EQs, which both feature a gain range of ±10dB, and a variable boost circuit provides up to 10dB of additional gain at the output. Two footswitches are present, the first of which engages the boost circuit, whilst the second mutes the pedal’s outputs.
A pair of quarter-inch TS sockets provide send and return connections for a built-in effects loop, allowing users to experiment with inserting other effects pedals into their signal path. Balanced and unbalanced outputs are available, with the former using an XLR connector and the latter provided on another quarter-inch TS socket, and power is accepted from an external 9VDC power supply.
Roxi
Roxi is again equipped with one of Grace Design’s high-quality microphone preamps, but unlike its smaller sibling, features an XLR/TRS combo socket and will also accept instrument level signals. A switchable high-pass filter is once again present, but can be placed at either 75 or 150Hz, and the EQ section also benefits from an upgrade with the addition of a sweepable (175Hz to 4kHz) mid band. Continuing with the extended functionality, Roxi’s effects loop gains a dry/wet mix control.
The Grace Design Roxi's rear panel.The pedal retains all of the audio connectivity found on Rex, but with an additional quarter-inch TS socket designed to act as an output for a tuner, and the unbalanced output also gains an independent level control. A set of DIP switches on the side of the pedal provide configuration options such as engaging and setting the frequency of the high-pass filter, setting the output level of the DI connection and configuring the left footswitch to engage and bypass either the boost circuit or effects loop.
Roxi also features a built-in universal power supply, which will accept 100-250VAC mains power, and will pass on up to 500mA of 9VDC power to additional pedals thanks to a 2.1mm centre-negative output.
Pricing & Availability
Both pedals are available now, with Rex costing $585 and Roxi priced at $895.
