Josh Fiden originally started Voodoo Lab in 1986 as Digital Music Corp in the Los Angeles area. His background was in physics and computer science. He started the company in his spare bedroom, making RAM cartridges for DX7 keyboards. That led to MIDI patchbays and eventually the creation of his first guitar-centric product, the GCX Guitar Audio Switcher and Ground Control MIDI foot pedal.
James Santiago, vice president of Voodoo Lab, started playing guitar at an early age, and by 15 he was in a working cover band that gigged constantly. He also loved tearing all his
gear apart, learning how it worked, and trying to fix it himself. James goes on to explain,
“If I wasn’t playing guitar, I was ripping my gear apart! The next major career step for me was working for Guitar Player magazine when I was around 20. It was there that I spent many late nights helping Art Thompson test all the gear that came in the door for reviews.
For the next roughly eight years, I did that along with fly dates and short tours with a number of bands. I was also making my own pedals around this time, just as an
experiment. One of them did become an official product called the Sparkle Drive. My longtime friend Josh Fiden [who still owns Voodoo Lab] asked me sometime in the late
’90s if there was something I really wanted in a pedal. Done!”
Figure 5.96 Voodoo Lab Giggity: a super overdrive that gives you a new sonic tone.
© 2015 Erik Christian Photography.
The next phase of James’ career was spending several years working at Line 6. “I was considered part of the creative department. That allowed me to float a little between areas in the company. Some days I would help write presets for various products, do testing in sound design, attend product development roundtables, shoot video and record audio demos, write copy, and more. It was there that all my various skills collided into a single job. I loved my time there, but I was also burnt out. It was around 2007 that I left Line 6.
After chatting with my friend Josh, we both decided it would be fun to get back to analog gear. I’ve been with Voodoo Lab since. We also support many other pedal companies on a daily basis. We make the best-selling power supply, and our audio switching gear is used by some of the biggest touring acts ever. So, there are many days when we’re on the phone with other pedal companies, helping them make their pedals sound great in an artist rig.
Hey, I love pedals and constantly buy everyone else’s stuff, too!”
Figure 5.97 The Voodoo Lab Tremolo re-creates the buttery, juicy tone of a vintage tube amp tremolo.
When designing pedals, some of the early Voodoo Lab pedals started life as a classic sound. “For instance, when the Micro Vibe was released, there really was no other small format, 9V pedal that could give you a true Uni-Vibe phase sound. Josh and his engineers were able to shrink and update the circuit but still maintain the key elements, which were the photocells and lamp, found in the original. Wahzoo started as the vintage Clyde
McCoy wah but can do things the original could never do. It can go from standard wah use to almost vintage keyboard-like patterns with a tap tempo.”
When it comes to using digital versus analog technology, James said, “I use both and enjoy them for different reasons. Plus, having worked heavily in the DSP field for years, but also as a hardcore vintage amp, guitar, and effect nut, I’m for whatever inspires people to make great music. I can get just as inspired by playing through my 1966 JTM-50
Marshall with an Arbiter England Fuzz Face as I do my Fractal Axe-Fx II. Just different things for different days.”
Voodoo Lab’s focus at this point is designing power supplies and small-format, pedal board–friendly switching systems. “We now have many versions of the Pedal Power mostly because high-current DSP pedals are everywhere now. And many of them don’t even take a 9V battery anymore. With audio switching systems, our goal is to help players integrate their vintage pedals with studio-quality DSP effects. Over the next few years, we will be releasing more things like PX8 [pedal board audio loop strip with MIDI] and HEX [small-format audio switcher].”
Walrus
Brady Smith of Walrus Audio started messing with effects pedals early on while learning the guitar. “My first guitar pedal was a BOSS RV-3 reverb, not the conventional first pedal purchase. A friend of mine was offloading a bunch of pedals, and I wound up with that
one. After college, I jumped around a few formal jobs and finally had the opportunity to work for a pedal company in Edmond, Oklahoma. After a couple of years learning how to build pedals and seeing different sides of the business, it felt right to break away and try to make things in the fashion that appealed to me. I had some different thoughts on sounds that I wanted to use in my own playing, as well as the aesthetics of pedals. There are a lot of great pedals and pedal companies out there, but with Walrus we were aiming to create some sounds that we hadn’t really discovered in any other pedals, especially at an
affordable price point. So we made them.”
When designing his own pedals, Brady commented, “I always think in reference to what I already know. For instance, the Big Muff fuzz is great, and I know that sound. I know its limitations and its strengths. For our Jupiter Fuzz, we wanted to pull from that but fill in the weak parts. For the tremolo on the Janus, we needed a simple, functioning tremolo circuit. We started closer to an EA trem and discovered some different ways to capture a fuller tremolo sound. We have the Descent reverb coming out in late April and an analog delay later in the summer. I think the graphics are some of the best that Nathan Price [local artist, drummer for BRONCHO] has done for us up to this point.”
Figure 5.98 The Walrus Janus: a dual joystick–controlled tremolo/fuzz pedal to create your own tone.
© 2015 Erik Christian Photography.
Figure 5.99 The Walrus Voyager: Boost your tone with this gain/pre amp overdrive pedal.
Wampler
Like many of the other designers I’ve spoken to, Brian Wampler has been an ardent guitar player since he was a kid. Thanks to the influence of his older brothers, “I grew up
listening to a lot of the classic rock bands of the time. Growing up without a lot of money for different gear, I was always trying to find guitar effects that might turn the sound of my guitar into what I was hearing on the radio. I think one of my first pedals ever was an Electro-Harmonix pedal. I also used some Arion and some BOSS pedals as well. I was never totally sold on their sound, though. I was the type of kid that was constantly
tweaking things. If we were in the car, I was constantly trying to change the EQ. When I started driving, I was always changing speakers and stereo equipment. Honestly, I was just obsessed with the sound and quality of everything I was hearing. In addition to constantly looking for better sounds and tones, I was also one of those kids that liked to take almost everything apart and see how it worked. Around the year 2000, a friend of mine had modified a BOSS DS-1 pedal and let me borrow it. Instantly, I was blown away at how much better it sounded compared to my stock pedal. I had asked him what he did that was different, and he told me that there were some websites at the time that detailed how to change a few parts to make the pedals sound different or better. So, I went out and bought a couple of inexpensive BOSS pedals and tried to do some modifications myself. I was hooked!”
Figure 5.100 The Wampler Hot Wired Brent Mason Overdrive: Get your country on with this chicken pickin’ guitar tone!
Like his contemporary electronic nerds, Brian started learning and reading everything he could get his hands on that related to the electronic side of guitar effects and how it related to tone. “I built a breadboard and locked myself away for many months, obsessing over tones and what I could change in those stock pedals to get the specific sound, feel, and response I was looking for. Essentially, what I was doing was building up my chops, so to speak, and learning what sounds good and what didn’t, what works best in specific
situations in the world of guitar pedal electronics. Fast-forward a few years later: I was getting a lot of questions about the modifications I was doing. More particularly, what exactly those mods were. So I wrote a book, self-published it, and it kind of became a cult favorite among many DIYers at that time. Today it is no longer in print. Sometimes you can find copies of it on eBay that go for several hundred dollars!”
Figure 5.101 The Wampler Paisley Drive, with tonal controls, presence, and mid-contour switches to get you that Brad Paisley tone.
Wampler was started out of Brian’s hobby for designing pedals. “It was a hobby in the sense that I couldn’t find the tones I was looking for, so I made it my mission to find them.
What I really wanted, more than anything, was an overdrive and distortion that didn’t sound like a pedal, but sounded more like an amp, felt like an amp, and reacted to a player’s touch and response like an amp. After modifying pedals to do that sort of thing, people started to ask me to modify their pedals the same way. After modifying lots and lots of pedals, I realized that I wasn’t truly able to get the sound that I wanted without starting from the ground up and designing my own circuits and pedals, so I did.”
This leads us to discuss why Wampler pedals are set apart from the crowd. “What sets our pedals apart from other companies’ pedals is that our pedals are very accurate to the tones they’re trying create. They sound and feel completely realistic compared to their amp counterparts. Each of our pedals is handmade in America. I am absolutely meticulous about every aspect of the pedal design, including the exact type of components, as well as rigorous testing procedures to make sure that all of the independent parts we use are the best they can be. We actually throw away many components because they don’t stand up to my standards and specifications. When a person buys one of my pedals, I want each one to be consistent from pedal to pedal, with each one sounding great right out of the box—
with any guitar and amp setup, even solid-state amps!”
When designing pedals, Brian doesn’t like to take old designs and improve upon them.
“I’m really not a fan of taking existing overdrive circuits, slapping a new name on it, and putting it into a different box—I prefer to design all original circuits. Most of our
overdrive and distortions were designed around the feel, response, and tonality of an amp or recorded guitar tone. For example, the Pinnacles are designed around an EVH type of tonality, but I’ve added a lot of control over the various aspects of the tonality so it can do way more than just the brown sound. The Euphoria was designed to do more of a
transparent type of overdrive but have more of a feel and response of a particular Dumble-style amp that I had played.”
Brian goes on to explain, “We have designed both analog and digital effects. Although for anything related to overdrive, distortion, or fuzz, I totally prefer analog rather than digital circuits. There is ‘realness’ and a response to analog that I’ve never heard replicated in the digital world. I’ve heard some digital tones that sound decent, but when I play them, I have always felt a bit of a disconnection between the ears and the hands, almost like a very slight lag or delay; it just makes it feel fake to me. I’ll take analog dirt and a good tube amp any day of the week. However, it’s just not practical to make an analog reverb, for example, so with our digital-based effects I keep the signal analog and just layer the effect on top of it. It just sounds way better to me doing it that way instead of using digital-to-analog convertors and all that.”
Wampler Pedals has big plans for the future, and Brian discusses his five-year plan. “We actually have a ton of things in the works right now. I’m getting ready to release a bass line of effects, as well as another delay and another reverb pedal. I would love to do a limited run of several different overdrives and distortions that I’ve designed as well.
As far as five years from now, I really don’t project that far out. For example, five years ago there was no way I would have predicted that we would be doing the pedals we’ve released recently, just because of the ever-changing market. Ultimately, five years from now I don’t want to lose perspective on things that are the most important to me: building great-sounding and high-quality pedals and continuing to grow great relationships with our customers and the people I work with.”
XOTiC
XOTiC Effects is part of a much larger conglomeration called Prosound Communications in LA, which deals with exporting products overseas to Japan. They started the XOTiC brand in 1999 with a few products boasting the moniker of being “Handwired in the
USA.” Part of the line produces the BB Plus, BB Preamp, RC Booster, X-Blender, and the original production of Robotalk envelope filter/arpeggiator and the new innovative
Robotalk-RI.
Figure 5.102 The XOTiC BB Plus: a transparent guitar preamp that will clear up those cloudy days.
Figure 5.103 The XOTiC Bass BB preamp has myriad gain structures for any bass player to get his groove on.
© 2015 Erik Christian Photography.
Figure 5.104 The XOTiC BB Preamp: With 30 dB+ clean boost and adjustable ±15 dB two-band active EQ tones, the possibilities are endless!
Zoom
Zoom, a Japanese multi-technology company, manufactures digital recorders, effects pedals, and all sorts of music production tools exported worldwide. In 2000, they released the GFX-8, which was the flagship of the Zoom GFX series. It had an opto-based pedal on the right and a red LED display on the top left. It used the Variable Architecture Modeling System (VAMS) technology, and there were three modes: drive, modulation, and delay.
The drive mode incorporated effects such as compressor, overdrive, distortion, and fuzz.
There was also an amp simulation module, which allowed users to choose from various guitar-amp simulations. The modulation mode incorporated effects such as wah, phaser, chorus, ring modulation, tremolo, vibrato, flanging, and pitch shifting. Finally, the delay mode used effects such as delay and reverb. Zoom’s footprint now is much smaller, being housed in a small box design like the MultiStomp MS-100BT Multi Effects and the MS-60B for bass.
Figure 5.105 Zoom MultiStomp MS-100BT: Multi-effects, amp modeler, Bluetooth—what more could you ask?
B IBLIOGRAPHY
Hughes, Tom. Analog Man’s Guide to Vintage Effects. Foxon, CT: For Musicians Only Publishing, 2004.
Hunter, Dave. Guitar Effects Pedals: The Practical Handbook. Milwaukee, WI: Backbeat Books, 2004.
Pittman, Aspen. The Tube Amp Book. Milwaukee, WI: Backbeat Books, 2003.
Thompson, Dave. The Stompbox: A History of Guitar Fuzzes, Flangers, Phasers, Echoes and Wahs. Milwaukee, WI: Backbeat Books, 1997.
© 2015 Erik Christian Photography.
I NDEX
Numerics
12-Stage Phaser
44 Caliber Magnum power amp 1960s artists
45000 looper/sampler
A
Acoustic Simulator AC-2 Acoustikar pedal
AD999 Analog Delay pedal ADA Flanger
ADA manufacturer
Adaptive Distortion DA-2 Adineko Memory System Agnello, Tony
Aguilar, Alex
Airplane Flanger pedal Alairex pedal designer Alien Twister pedal
amp simulator guide (BOSS) Amp Switcher
Analog Alien pedal designer Analog Delay
Anderton, Craig Asterburner pedal Asterope Cables Atkins, Chet Audio Services
Audiotech pedal designer
Auto Q
Axcess by Giannini pedal designer
B
Bag, The Barr, Keith
Barta, B. Andrew Bass Balls
Bass BB preamp Bass Blow Torch Bass Booster
Bass Driver SansAmp DI pedal Bass Metaphors pedal
Bass Microsynth pedal Bass Tube Screamer pedal BB Plus preamp
BB preamp
BBE Sound pedal designer Bearded Lady pedal
Beatles Beck, Jeff Beckman, Tom Berko, Bill Berry, Chuck Big Muff
Billy Sheehan Signature Drive pedal Binson Echorec
Black Finger Compressor Blackstar pedal designer B.L.T.
Blue Box
Blues Crab pedal Bogner pedal designer
Boonshoft, Dave Boosta Grande pedal Boost/Line Driver Boost/Overdrive BOSS
Acoustic Simulator AC-2 Adaptive Distortion DA-2 amp simulator guide CE-1 Chorus Ensemble CE-2 Chorus
Chorus Ensemble CE-5 Chromatic Tuner TU-2 Compression Sustainer CS-3 CS-1 Compression Sustainer die-cast box designs
Digital Delay DD-3 Digital Sampler Delay Distortion DS-1
distortion guide distortion pedals DS-1 Distortion Dynamic Wah AW-3 Equalizer GE-7 FET switch
foreign takeover of guitar effects Giga Delay
Guitar Effects Guidebook series incorporation of digital technology line selection guide
LOOP Station LC-2 LOOP Station RC-3
loop/sampler manipulation guide
modulation sound guide noise reduction guide Noise Suppressor NS-2 Overdrive OD-3
overdrive pedals
Overdrive/Distortion OS-2 Phase Shifter
regulate gain control guide release of first pedal
Roland/BOSS story SL-20 Slider
sound pitch guide Super Chorus CH-1 Super Octave OC-3 tonality sound guide Turbo Distortion DS-2 TW-1 Touch Wah Bottom Booster pedal
Brian Tarquin & Heavy Friends: Guitars for Wounded Warriors Bridge of Sighs
Brown, Phil Bruno, Tony Buchanan, Roy Bucket Brigades Burlison, Paul
C
capacitors Carbon Copy
Caroline Guitar Company CE-1Chorus Ensemble CE-2 Chorus
Chorus Ensemble CE-5
Chromatic Tuner TU-2 Circus Freak pedal designer Clapton, Eric
Classic 108 Fuzz Cloud 9 Recording Clyde Deluxe wah
Compression Sustainer CS-3 Copicat tape echo machine Coven, Randy
Cruel Intentions (Brown) Cry Baby pedals
Crying Tone Wah pedal CS-1 Compression Sustainer Custom Badass ’78 distortion
Custom Badass Modified Overdrive Custom Comp
D
Dahl, Lars Dallas Arbiter
Dark Matter distortion Davis, Howard
DeArmond Tremolo Control box Delay Modeler DL4 pedal
Deluxe Memory Man Denney, Dick
Digital Delay
Digital Delay DD-3 Digital Sampler Delay DigiTech pedal designer Disnortion pedal
Distortion + Distortion DS-1
distortion sound guide (BOSS) distortion-free sustain sound DOD manufacturer
DOD Stereo Chorus FX65 Domino
Double Muff Drake, Peter
Dream Crusher pedal DS-1 Distortion Dual Tap Delay pedal Dunlop Fuzz Face Dunlop, Jim
Dunlop pedal designer Dyna Comp
Dynamic Wah AW-3
E
EarthQuaker pedal designer East River Drive pedal EBS pedal designer
Ecco-Fonic tape delay unit echo pedals, history of effects Echocord
Echolution pedal Echo-Reverb
EchoSonic amplifier Ecstasy pedal
Eddie Van Halen wah pedal Eddy, Duane
effects history
EH-R1 ribbon microphone EHX Deluxe Memory Man Electric Mistress
Electro-Harmonix
44 Caliber Magnum power amp 45000 looper/sampler
44 Caliber Magnum power amp 45000 looper/sampler