Walrus Audio has relaunched both pedals in its Storybook Series as MKII versions. The Lore (2022) is its reverse soundscape pedal, and the Fable (March 2023) was the company's first granular delay. Premier Guitar ran the announcement on October 13, and Guitar.com has the fuller spec rundown.
This is what's new, per Walrus via Premier Guitar and Guitar.com:
- Mono-in / stereo-out operation on both pedals. Neither source lists true stereo input.
- MIDI control, clock sync, and expression/external tap.
- Three onboard presets plus a Live mode, and up to 127 presets over MIDI.
- A multifunction Tweak control covering Width, Mod Rate, Mod Shape, Shift and Ramp.
- A momentary Dive / Rise function that bends the clock rate in real time.
- Feedback and Regen controls that send the sound through two separate feedback paths.
- Both pedals run on Walrus's in-house MDSP platform.
- $349.99 / £319 each, available now from Walrus dealers. Each comes in a Standard finish (Niall Grant artwork: Lore in green, Fable in gray) and a Minimal Black version.
Lore MKII has five dual-effect algorithms. They run from reverse delay into reverse reverb through to dual pitch-delay combinations. Fable MKII has five modes that pair delay with granular processing: reversed textures, octave-up cascades, octave-down ambience, glitchy clouds and randomized pitch. Walrus hasn't published formal mode names in either announcement I've read, so I won't make them up.
The MIDI Is the Real Upgrade for a Worship Board
I'll say the unglamorous part first. The headline is stereo, but the change that decides whether these pedals make it onto a Sunday board is 127 MIDI presets plus clock sync.
An ambient pedal like this has a lot of interacting controls: mix, time, feedback, regen, and now Tweak with five sub-parameters. You can't re-dial that between songs while the worship leader is talking into the next set. On the original pedals, a texture that worked in "Oceans" and a different one for the bridge of the next song meant either bending down mid-service or settling for one compromise setting all morning. On the MKII, the patch comes in with the song. If you already run a MIDI-capable switcher, or a modeler that can send program changes, each song in the rotation can have its own Lore or Fable patch next to its snapshot.
Clock sync matters for the same reason. Reverse delay and granular repeats sound musical when they land on the grid of the song. When they're a few milliseconds off the click, they sound like a mistake. With MIDI clock from the same source as your tracks, the repeats follow the tempo without anyone tapping.
Stereo Out Is Great Until It Hits the Board
Here's the part the spec sheet doesn't tell you. Wide, randomized, pitch-scattered stereo is exactly the kind of image that changes character when it's summed to mono, and many church PAs run guitar mono, or close to it, front of house.
I covered how each stereo trick behaves when it's summed in Which Stereo Widening Tricks Survive a Mono PA. Short version: content that's genuinely different on each side survives better than tricks built on tiny time offsets between the sides. Granular processing with randomized pitch should fall in the first group. A Width control set to maximum is the one to check. Before you set Tweak > Width by ear in your in-ears, run the thirty-second mono test from that piece: sum it, and listen to whether the texture thins out or gets a comb-filtered tilt.
On a board that's otherwise mono, place it with care, too. Mono-in / stereo-out means anything after it has to stay stereo, or the Lore or Fable's image collapses right back. If your reverb or modeler after it is stereo-capable, you're fine. If there's a mono block downstream, the stereo work is wasted. I cover that problem on Helix in Helix Legacy Blocks Are Mono.
Where These Sit in a Worship Chain, and How to Audition the Idea for Free
Both pedals are delay-based texture machines, not reverbs, so treat them that way: after drive, before your main reverb. Running Lore's reverse gesture into a short reverb is the same "reverse first, then smear it" ordering I recommend in Reverse Reverb on Guitar.
If you play a Helix or Quad Cortex, you can test whether you'd actually use Lore tonight. Put the Reverse Delay block before a long reverb, set a longer reverse time and a moderate mix, and play the space between two chords of a slow song. That's the core gesture of the reverse modes. If you find yourself turning it off by the second chorus, Lore's other four algorithms probably won't change your mind.
Fable is harder to audition. I don't know of a single block on either platform that I'd call a stand-in for its granular modes. The octave-up and octave-down modes are the ones worth thinking about in a band, because they put new energy in octaves you might not own. If a keys player is holding a pad, read Ambient Guitar and Keys Pad: Who Gets Which Octave before you engage the octave-down cloud under their left hand.
Dive / Rise: The Feature I Actually Want to Try
The momentary Dive / Rise bends the clock rate in real time, so the whole texture pitches and smears while you hold it. Most of what these pedals do is set-and-forget. This is the part that's playable, and I can hear its job right away: a transition. The last chord of one song rings out, you hold Dive, the wash sinks, and the next song's key comes in underneath. It's a bigger gesture than a volume swell, and it serves the room in the same way. Use it once per set, not once per song.
I haven't had either MKII on a board yet, so everything above is about the spec and how it fits into a service, not a review of the sound. For $349.99, the question isn't "does it sound amazing." Walrus ambient pedals usually do. The question is whether you'll recall it per song. With MIDI on board, you finally can.
