Alien who? Analog Alien is made up of two brothers: Jack Napoli, who has been playing the guitar since 1972, and his brother Joe Napoli, who started playing the drums about a year after. They formed a band and began playing at clubs in the New York City area. In the early 1980s, they built a small recording studio in their parents’ home. It grew into a large studio in a very short time. Although they built it just to record themselves, the word eventually got out, and they started recording local bands there, too. Today, it is a
professional recording studio, and they call it Cloud 9 Recording. They record all styles of music and have worked with local bands and international rock stars such as Joan Jett. As time went on, they acquired not only quite a large collection of guitars, drums, and amps, but also a large collection of effects pedals.
Figure 5.2 The Analog Alien Twister pedal comes in a wooden box with hot sauce. How can you say no to this fuzz pedal?
They got started in the pedal-making business by modifying some of the pedals in their collection so that the pedals would better suit their needs in the recording studio. That eventually led to them coming up with their own designs, the first of which was the FuzzBubble-45. As Jack states, “After we came up with the idea for the FB-45, it took us about a year before we were satisfied with the results. After that, we built two prototypes and started using them in the studio. They were in plain gray boxes with no markings on them. After a while, a lot of the guitarists that were recording in the studio asked to use our pedal. They then asked us if we would build one for them. With that, we decided to go into production. What really sets our pedals apart from other pedals on the market is the fact that our pedals are inspired by and conceived in the recording studio. We saw a need for pedals to sound and respond a certain way based on our own recording needs and the needs of the artists who were recording in our studio. This gave us good insight as to what guitar players really needed in a pedal, as well as a big advantage when it came to
designing them.”
Figure 5.3 Analog Alien FuzzBubble overdrive pedal. It reproduces classic tones from the ’60s and ’70s. I wonder if you get a free bottle of bubbles with this one?
According to Jack, the FuzzBubble-45 was not inspired by another pedal. The ideas for their pedals really come from the recording studio. He goes on to say, “When we feel we have a need for a certain sound in the studio and we don’t have a pedal that will give us that sound, we make it ourselves. So other pedals do not inspire our pedals at all, but [we are inspired] by our needs and the needs of guitar players we work with. The only
exception to this is the Alien Twister. The Twister was inspired by an original César Díaz
‘Texas Square Face.’ While the Square Face sounded very good, it wasn’t very versatile.
You had to turn it up full in order to get the fuzz to sound right. As soon as you
manipulated the controls in any way, the fuzz just died off, which is typical of most classic fuzz pedals. So we set out to build a fuzz pedal that could get that sound but would also be more versatile. But our circuit is not based on the Square Face—it’s totally different. After we came up with the circuit, we built a prototype and used it in the studio for a while. We continued to adjust the circuit until we were satisfied. The whole process can take a long time. Both the FuzzBubble-45 and the Alien Twister took several months of recording and testing before we were satisfied with the results.”
For the most part, the brothers prefer analog for overdrive, distortion, and just about everything else, too—with the exception of some digital circuits that sound very good when it comes to delay and reverb pedals. The delay and reverb sections of their pedal the Rumble Seat are a mixture of analog and digital technology. It was this combination that gave the pedal the right sound. The analog circuit gave it the warmth they were looking for, while the digital clock kept the delay repeats and reverb trails tight and articulate. At the end of the day, if the pedal sounds good and meets their qualifications, that’s all that really matters.
They just finished work on a multi-effects bass pedal called the Alien Bass Station (ABS).
The ABS has three effects built into it: Limiter/Compressor, Amp Generator, and the Gamma Fuzz.
with this one.
© 2015 Erik Christian Photography.
“In five years,” Jack said, “we see ourselves doing the same thing we’re doing now—
building pedals that allow guitarists to take control of their sound, while at the same time allowing them to truly express themselves. From the first pedal we ever created, the FB-45, right up to our latest, the ABS, that’s what all of our pedals do. We’re also going to continue to grow this company one pedal at a time. We have no intention of stopping or slowing down, and of course we’ll continue to let Cloud 9 Recording and the guitar players we work with inspire us.”
Audiotech
Audiotech may not be a monster company like MXR or BOSS, but they have monster users, such as Carlos Santana, Sammy Hagar, Michael Anthony, Johnny Lang, Joe Perry, Andy Summers, Steve Stevens, and the list goes on.
It all started with Eric Roberts, president of Audiotech, who was born in the early 1970s and grew up in northeast Ohio. Eric was exposed to music at a very young age. His mom played some piano and had a baby grand in the house. His grandfather and his brothers would come over with the accordion and play and sing. When Eric was two years old, his mom bought him one of those toy Mickey Mouse nylon-string wind guitars from the dime store. He became immediately hooked and loved it, even though it wasn’t a “real” guitar.
It was something he wanted to do all the time, just play and sing. Like the John Lee Hooker song “Boogie Chillen’,” his parents realized they had to “let that boy boogie woogie.”
Figure 5.5 The Pro-Verdrive Monster overdrive pedal gives that amp the extra boost for killer tone.
His parents decided to buy him a better, more serious guitar, because he would go through those dime-store guitars quickly, and the strings would pop. So when Eric was five, his parents bought him a nice acoustic guitar. Then one of Eric’s other brother’s friends brought over the first Van Halen album, and that was it. He was blown away! And totally into it. “I couldn’t believe some of the stuff Eddie was doing on guitar. And the guitar effects on that album were unreal! The phase shifter, flanger, and echoes. That Univox EC-80 Echo Chamber sounded like the end of the earth. I started reading up on every Eddie Van Halen interview I could get, not only to learn more about his playing, but also to see how he was getting that incredible tone. And how he was using the effects. At the same time, my brothers brought home other albums that had a huge influence on me at the time, like the Cars, Boston, Led Zeppelin, Kiss, Aerosmith, AC/DC…then later on it was Judas Priest, Scorpions, et cetera. Then around age 11, I finally got another guitar for Christmas; it was a guitar from Sears, made overseas. I don’t remember the exact model, but it was definitely a student-type guitar. Meanwhile, my brother got another (better) guitar and started playing with some of the guys in the neighborhood. I can remember him bringing home effects he borrowed from friends or ones he bought at the music store. One of the first effects he bought was the Muff Fuzz by Electro-Harmonix, and then he got an Ibanez FL-301 flanger, the yellow one. Which I thought sounded really good. It seemed more affordable and just as good as the MXR flanger; they sounded very similar. I thought these boxes making these cool sounds were the greatest. This was my first experience with effects pedals.”
When Eric was around 17, he started to buy some of his own guitars and effects pedals, like the Electro-Harmonix Memory Man. He also had a Rocktek Distortion and the now-sought-after Arion SCH-1 Stereo Chorus, which sounded really good. Around this time he started taking his guitars apart to see how they were made and what went into them. He says, “But at that time, being influenced by Eddie Van Halen, it seemed like hey, it was okay to work on your own gear, and you didn’t have to go to MIT to do it. It gave me a
little confidence to work on guitars to get ’em where I wanted. I can remember buying a Kramer Pacer from a place called West Park Music. As soon as I got that guitar home I played it. It seemed a little off, so then out came the screwdrivers. I did it for the same reasons as Eddie, too; it just seemed like the guitars at the music store were always lacking something or needed to be modded (i.e. Floyd Rose, Duncan’s, etc.) to get them where you wanted them. At this time, I think I did start to develop a small curiosity in
electronics. I’d spend a lot of time in RadioShack, looking at parts, wondering what the various components do. Then as the whole ’80s hair thing was going on, I started listening to other guitar-oriented bands, like Ratt, Dokken, Mr. Big, et cetera. Some of the tone guys like Warren DeMartini and George Lynch were getting just blew me away and left me wondering how they were doing it. I later realized, as my playing started to improve, that most of it was simply coming from their hands, pick attack, and just their playing style in general.”
Even though Eric designs, manufactures, and sells effects pedals for a living, he does subscribe to the theory that “tone is in the bone.” He actually doesn’t use a lot of effects in his own rig except chorus, delay, and maybe some wah here and there. He always wanted to play as clean as Eddie Van Halen or Warren DeMartini and not use effects as a crutch, but more as an enhancer.
He saw this happen with a lot of guys when growing up and playing in bands. A lot of guys came to rely on the fact that a certain distortion box or fuzz gave them 10 tons of gain, so nobody could hear what was going on. To Eric, effects pedals are like spices: “a little here, a little there; not too much or it’ll just ruin the whole thing, meaning the song or whatever music you’re trying to make. It ends up overpowering the music. Like with
amps, too; there are a lot of amps out there with gobs of gain and no character. This is why I’ve always liked and used Marshalls, especially the early ones, because with most of them you’re pretty much naked out there, and you can’t hide behind all that gain. And Marshalls have character. Fenders, too. You know that Fender clean when you hear it. It always kills me when guys throw a gain pedal in front of a Marshall or similar tube amp.
It’s like, what did you buy the amp for? [Laughs] You could have just bought a standalone distortion or multi-effects unit or something.”
Eric goes on to say, “So as I was reading what a lot of these guys in the ’80s were using gear-wise, I kept seeing this Bob Bradshaw guy’s name mentioned all over with these custom guitar racks and pedal boards. And I was intrigued; the idea of a custom rack and/or pedal board built around a guitar player’s needs was pretty cool. Of course, you’d see Bradshaw in all the magazine ads back then, too. But I still wasn’t quite sure how it all worked. I wanted to know more about it. I wanted to know what was under the hood of some of these switchers, how they worked, and more importantly, did it affect the overall tone? Then I found myself in a hard rock/heavy metal band playing lead guitar; did this for a few years. So that kind of shifted my focus away from learning more about gear. But I was now using things like the Scholz R&D Chorus, DOD Delay, Rocktron HUSH (the half-rack one), those kinds of effects. This was in the early ’90s, when the whole
Nirvana/Pearl Jam thing started happening, and it was no longer popular to be in a hard rock/heavy metal band. I actually don’t care for the whole categorizing thing; I just think music is music, and if it’s good and people enjoy it, it’s just good music period. But people seemed to be tuning out of what we wanted to do. I think it was obvious to the other guys
in my band at that point that if we went to LA and tried to get a record deal, it would probably be an exercise in futility. [Laughs] So I thought to myself, well, if this doesn’t happen I’d like to at least own a music store or do something that’s still related to music career-wise. After the band thing was over, I was in a bookstore and saw pictures of
Yngwie Malmsteen’s Bradshaw rig in a magazine called Guitar Shop, which is not around anymore. I think that’s when I got bit by the gear bug a little more.”
Eric started getting into the Craig Anderton books. In the mid-’90s, he would just sit there for hours reading through his book. He wanted to get a better understanding of electronics, so he picked up some other books at the library and started studying and learning more.
He spent a lot of time in libraries reading—in particular, a book by a British author named John Watson, titled Mastering Electronics—to learn as much as he could. So Eric went on to start Audiotech Guitar Products because he noticed a renewed interest in more of a stomp box pedal-based approach coming out of the ’80s and early ’90s, as opposed to all of the rack stuff. “I saw a gap in the market for high-quality, affordable guitar effects products. Especially the switching stuff. I think what sets us apart is we try to come up with products that are simple, easy to use, and practical. When designing a new product, I always say to myself, is it practical? Will people use it? Is there a need for it? And I also try to make products that nobody has really thought of before. For instance our PD-1 Pro-Verdrive is based on a lot of the classic overdrive tones from the 1970s. I wanted that classic warm overdrive tone from back then that complements a nice tube amp and also cleans up well when you back off on the guitar’s volume control. It’s perfect if you’re looking to push your amp over the edge. Or you can use it as a basic stand-alone overdrive pedal.”
As far as his theory on analog versus digital technologies, Eric thinks they’re doing some interesting things with digital technology these days. “I actually like digital delay/echo better than analog. I know that’s pedal purist blasphemy nowadays, and I’ll probably get beat up for having that opinion, but I think it sounds great. I think digital gets a bad rap.
Now when it comes to overdrive gain or distortion, I prefer analog; I think the differences are obvious to the ears. I think you lose some of the humanness with digital.”
As far as future plans for the company, Eric told me, “Right now we’re doing a new take on the guitar cable that nobody’s really thought of and we feel is pretty innovative. We’re also working on a new wah-type thing, which I can’t really get into, and some other pedal board-mounted stuff. We’re also working on a new tremolo, octavia, and envelope filter.
And we’re always developing new switching stuff that we hope to have out soon. In five years, we’d like to be doing more pro-audio type stuff. We’ll always do pedals, but we want to expand our product line in that market a little more.”
BBE
Headquartered in sunny California since the 1980s, the conglomeration of BBE Sound consists of many musical products they manufacture and distribute, such as G&L Guitars and an array of pro audio gear. However, they have a good market share in the stomp box market with some cool effects, such as the distortion pedals by Paul Gagon; the 427 FD-427P, the modern muscle car of distortion pedals, with a big, meaty tone; and the
Blacksmith, which features Paul’s LED-based distortion circuit paired with his PLEX-EQ tone stack. And let’s not forget the Sonic Maximizer or the Two Timer, a classic analog Bucket Brigade delay with that warm, haunting reverb and tape-like echoes.
Figure 5.6 The BBE Sonic Stomp pedal: Get low-contour tone for pure metal meltdown!
© 2015 Erik Christian Photography.
Figure 5.7 The BBE Two Timer pedal: How many slap backs can you handle?
© 2015 Erik Christian Photography.
© 2015 Erik Christian Photography.
Figure 5.9 The BBE Boosta Grande pedal: Want a clean boost? Well, here it is, up to +20 dB!
© 2015 Erik Christian Photography.
Blackstar
Originally launching amplifiers in 2007 from their company headquarters in Northampton,
England, Blackstar has widened its horizons to include a line of effects pedals. Four fellow bandmates created the company, looking for a new challenge. Having worked together previously at other amp companies, they wanted to create innovative guitar amplifiers and pedals of their own. Such pedals are the LT Dual overdrive pedal, which features their patented ISF (Infinite Shape Feature) circuit, giving you infinite adjustment over the characteristics of the tone control, and the HT-REVERB pedal, which consists of valve compression and harmonics that are added using the Dwell control, plus the ability of switching the reverb time from short to long.
Figure 5.10 Blackstar Dual: Double the boost punch, and double the chance your neighbors will hate you!
© 2015 Erik Christian Photography.
Figure 5.11 The Blackstar HT-REVERB will take you from small room to Albert Hall in one dial!
Figure 5.12 The Blackstar LT Drive’s patent-applied-for clipping circuit delivers amazing valve-like tone.
Figure 5.12 The Blackstar LT Drive’s patent-applied-for clipping circuit delivers amazing valve-like tone.