guitar pedal stuff

[JohnRoberts]

http://tonereport.com/blogs/interviews/precision-tweaking-a-chat-with-james-brown-of-amptweaker

James is an old friend from our Peavey days...

JR

 

[okgb]

Sounds like a fairly together kinda guy ,  I like that he keeps some versatility and options in the pedals

We may never swing back to the rack 80's but when contemplating wiring up a pedal board I realized
My t.c. electronic rack mount multi effect was smaller easy convenient and sounded pretty good.
though they are building those into pedal these days,

on a side note I heard a radio commercial for hearing aids which claimed to use a quad core processor

 

[dmp]

I like his attitude and what he's doing. If I bought pedals, I'd certainly look at his stuff (but I'm not in the market)
I watched a documentary on Netflix recently ("fuzz"? ) that was really interesting, but also showed how much hype & 3rd party thinking was going on in the business side. A lot of makers were saying really cynical things - like product placement matters much more than how good the pedal actually is (i.e. such and such played this pedal so it must be good!)

 

[midwayfair]

A lot of makers were saying really cynical things - like product placement matters much more than how good the pedal actually is (i.e. such and such played this pedal so it must be good!)

The cynicism is well earned. With pedals that are designed to completely mangle the signal, "good" doesn't really enter into it. It becomes more a matter of "usable?" and "works when I step on it." Any flaw could be a desirable trait to someone, down to, if some TGP threads are to believed, lousy wiring and excess noise.

This is without resorting to arguing that 50% of the time, 25% of the distortion pedals sound the same in 12.5% of the settings.

But I'll keep building them ...

 

[JohnRoberts]

I like his attitude and what he's doing. If I bought pedals, I'd certainly look at his stuff (but I'm not in the market)
I watched a documentary on Netflix recently ("fuzz"? ) that was really interesting, but also showed how much hype & 3rd party thinking was going on in the business side. A lot of makers were saying really cynical things - like product placement matters much more than how good the pedal actually is (i.e. such and such played this pedal so it must be good!)

Indeed the MI (musical instrument) business is all about who is using (or playing your gear). In most cases there are significant monetary considerations behind endorsements. A friend of mine ran artist relations for Peavey for a few years and some quid pro quo is involved for the bigger names. Many lesser name endorsements are just in exchange for price discounts on gear (Peavey is too cheap to give free gear to unknowns ).  One thing that ticked me off was how many of my big dog recording consoles were given away to artists, who then gave them away to associates or flipped them. One time I was arguing with the company controller about not getting a proper ad budget for my consoles and  he shared how little profit remained after all the consoles that were given away by Hartley.  I didn't even get to use those name artists in ads,,,, because i didn't have any ad budget....
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One high profile artist deal that James was involved with while working at Peavey was designing the 5150 for Eddie Van Halen.  I'm sure Eddie got a taste from the amp sales, but i was pleasantly surprised by how involved he was in the actual design. Now Eddie lacks the chops to melt solder, but he had specific ideas about the sounds he wanted. He collaborated with James on several design iterations until they both were happy, Eddie blessed the sound, and James insured it was actually produceable. (IIRC the tweaks even went as far as the type of wood used in the cabinet).  Eddie has since moved on to a different amp company deal.  A version of the 5150 was renamed something else and is still being sold (I think), because it is a decent amp even without a name artist to help push it. 

Eddie also did a deal for a signature Peavey guitar (Wolfgang) named after his kid...  While probably TMI I don't think Peavey ever made a penny of profit from the Wolfgang  (they were expensive to make). Artist signature products are a form of compensation, but after the products run their course in the market the artists often move on in search of the next deal.

James has been in the industry for decades and knows his way around guitar amps, what sounds good, and how to make circuits do what he wants them to. He jammed in bar bands for years so has a good ear, even played at my house parties a few times  8) (his bar band was called the Dirty Dogs). If you check out his website he is very much about letting customers drive the feature sets, and his named endorsees probably actually like his pedals. His company is too small to pay them enough money to say they like them if they didn't.

Players that I know and respect like James' pedals, so they probably don't suck.

JR