A faithful recreation of a recognizable 1980s unit, the Electro-Harmonix Crash Pad is an analog drum synth in a foot-pedal housing. It creates a signal which you can trigger via the on-board push-button or an external non-MIDI drum pad (available separately). Furthermore, you can manipulate that signal via decay, resonance, and volume knobs. A sweep section—replete with start, stop, and time knobs—can also provide pitch oscillations to transform your sound from the natural to the alien with the twist of your fingers.

The pedal features an expression input which gives you full and continuous foot-control over the sweep section (pedal available separately), while an auxiliary input allows you to utilize that sweep section as an external filter, bringing highly unusual tones to guitars and keyboards.

You'll also find a fixed-volume DIP switch located inside the unit just above the output jack. This feature disables the decay knob, allowing you to continuously filter a sound without having to re-trigger it.