Red Panda Tensor

first of all, I love it.
I'll try to give a description of what this thing is: it's a tape maching that follows you everywhere, and you have some control of how it follows you. It can track you, repeating everthing you play, or it can record what you play (overdubbing or not) and play it back. The play back can be adjusted: you can set direction and speed, stretching and compressing (without affecting pitch), and change pitch. Add a little controlable randomness if you want with a dedicated control. Now, where it gets really interesting, is by using the footswitch or the expression pedal. With the first you have 4 different modes available (and use it to store presets, or to control the pedal footswitches if you want to spare them from stomping - don't forget this is a type of loop pedal, so there will be a lot of stomping), and with the expression pedal you can control any of the parameters and combine them if you wish.

The thing is: you have to know what you will use it for, and there is no obvious use to it. Otherwise, it wil create a mess, or an unusable effect. It is a wonderful pedal, opens up your creativity, but you'll have to be open for it.

I use this with guitar, primarily, and while I'm also interested in ambient textures (often as a part of something that isn't ambient in other ways) I find that the Tensor's USP's (Unique Selling Propositions - what sets one thing apart from another) are not really musical in themselves. They're more for glitching things up, or are novelty things such as the tape effects, something you'd use very seldom if you're interested in making actual songs. The only dependable function here that is of use to me would be the looper option, but I already have three pedals (Strymon, TC Electronic, and Boss) that can all loop material with far more control over that loop.

I was looking for something that could enhance what is passing through it, and the Tensor, with the exception of being able to loop, just messes around with the signal (in mono too, which for something like this is a limitation), either for novelty effects or randomly glitching whatever is passing through it which is, like it or not, just another novelty effect of no real musical value.

My music is about intent, and direction, and while I'm as happy to noodle around for ideas just like most people, the ideas have to come from me, and they need to crystallise and be repeatable, and the Tensor's "USP" of randomness and weirdness is just too difficult to put to any musical use unless you always have a recorder running to catch the moment when it did something interesting.

The build of the pedal is very nice, and the idea of the LED colours giving clues as to settings is also a good feature, as is the idea that an expression pedal could control settings on the fly (done by many other high-end pedal makers). The fact that settings can't be saved on a pedal that is so difficult to "dial in" is a real minus. Over the course of years I might be able to build up a bank of 32 settings that I can use, but as it is I'm stuck with taking a digital image and then trying to recreate the sound later from the controls! The dark finish is a bit of a minus as well. This pedal will rarely be used on stage (it's not predictable enough), and in a studio it could be a more useful colours and a more useful format too. It doesn't do anything standard (like chorus or flanging for example) that other simpler pedals can't do more simply and more controllably.

The tape reverse isn't unique, it's on pedals such as those made by Empress (Echosystem) and Old Blood Noise (Minim) and in a far more musical context. The Empress Echosystem (and the Strymon Timeline) are much more usable for people that want to control all of the elements of the sounds they're making. The Echosystem also allows some weirdness, but not at the expense of having a very usable and very controllable set of musically useful configurations, which the Tensor simply doesn't have.

So in summary, it's probably a really good pedal for those that might want to have a device that makes some musical decisions for them (not just sonic effects, this goes off by itself randomly babbling the things you put into it) because this is designed not to enhance your sounds so much as mangle them in a way that's both tricky to control and a bit hit & miss in what you get back out - in glorious mono.

I think for the money, if you're a musician that likes making sounds that are fundamentally musical but which need a light sprinkling of "fairy dust" on them for seasoning, then this isn't the pedal for you. If you're someone that doesn't mind when your seasoning drops into your dinner in one huge blob, and you say, "oh well, let's see what it tastes like", then you might get along with this. I can't get along with it at all.

If I can return it, I will.

I hate this standard pedal world-view of providing a couple of knobs and hiding extra functionality for midi controllers, shift buttons, hold three stomps and turn this to the right and that to the left etc — why not make it a little bigger, add a small screen and a couple of data-knobs? It wouldn't add too much to the price.
It has presets, but you can't deal with them without midi, it has at least two extra knobs you can't access other than in a web-based midi-editor. It's stereo, but on stereo-jacks, which are sadly not a standard nowadays, so you need some weird Y-wires.

Okay, I can complain endlessly, but let's stop here and finish it all with this: what it does with sound and its functionality is unexplainably amazing, really.

Or, perhaps I'll finish with the fact that I'm having difficult times convincing myself I don't need a second one for another instrument.