Happy new year, all. Sorry I’ve been so scarce — mostly, I’ve been practicing guitar! I’m trying out lots of challenging new things (for me, anyway) and I’ll share some of them as videos very soon. I’ve also been finalizing the four new Joe Gore pedals I’m debuting at NAMM 2018. Lookit!
They’ve already gone into the production, and they’ll be available via Vintage King very soon. I have yet to make demo videos and detailed spec sheets, and we still haven’t finalized the prices. (It depends how much the damn germanium transistors in Cult Germanium Channel and Porkolator wind up costing.)
In the meantime, here’s the info sheet I’m distributing at NAMM. Also, Premier Guitar is scheduled to record a demo video at the show and post it on their site. (I’ll share the details when that happens.) I hope I sound less like a squirrel on meth than I did for last year’s show-floor video.
If you’re attending the show in Anaheim, please visit me at booth #15517. (It’s a huge booth run by my distributors, M1. I’ll be crammed behind a tabletop somewhere within.) I’d love to say hi.
This doesn’t qualify as any kind of NAMM report. I was imprisoned behind the desk at my Gore Pedals booth, relieved only for bathroom breaks and a couple of visits with old friends. Even so, I saw some lovely and inspiring things, especially the visionary instruments at the Boutique Guitar Showcase and the ravishing stompbox visuals from Greece’s JAM Pedals. (JAM pedals sound great too.) Plus a few old friends dropped by. It was so fun, I went minutes at a time without thinking about the inauguration.
A modernist vision from luthier Pete Malinoski.
Pancake-thin perfection from Venice, Italy's Di Donato Guitars.
Spalt's Frankenstein Music Machine, a genuine show-stopper.
Whimsy unchained from Vienna-based luthier Michael Spalt.
Serge Michaels of Belgium's TAO Guitars shows off his magnificent Phaeton model.
Like its name promises, the One-Piece Master from Sauvage is carved entirely from a single block of wood.
The Antikythera Mechanism of stompboxes from JAM Pedals. Yes, the gears work.
Fillmore poster meets multi-effect board — a lovely thing from JAM Pedals
Jannis Anastasakis, brilliant builder behind Greece's JAM Pedals.
My NorCal crew [L-R]: Xander Soren, the mastermind in charge of music apps at Apple (and a fine player); Talking Head and producer extraordinaire Jerry Harrison; some schnook; engineer, producer, producer, and cool guy Travis Kasperbauer.
It was awesome to meet the guys behind those ever-inventive Earthquaker pedals.
So nice to run into the brilliant Mike Keneally.
Eleven JAM effect in a single integrated pedalboard.
Curves galore from TAO Guitars.
A metallic duo from McSwain Guitars.
A metallic duo from McSwain Guitars.
Jannis Anastasakis of JAM Pedals was kind enough to loan me one of the eye-popping pedalboards from his display (the last image in the slideshow). I’ll be posting a demo here soon!
Is anyone attending the 2017 NAMM thing next week in Anaheim? I’ll be there demoing my pedals and checking out the latest guitars and gizmos. If you’re there, stop by and say hi! I’ll be at booth #6820 in Hall A (that is, the pro audio room where guitarists fear to tread) with M1, my distributor (and sister company of my partners, Vintage King). I’ll be playing and talking about my stuff, and there will also be headphone stations where you can try them out for yourself.
The headphone rigs are newfangled Valvulators from Fryette Amplification. These are cool 1-watt tube amps for direct recording, with amp-style controls plus speaker emulations. There will also be a set of my pedals at Fryette’s booth, #4844 in guitar-intensive Hall C.
After writing about other people’s gear for so many years, it’s still difficult for me to wrap my head around the notion that I’m attending the show as a manufacturer, not a “journalist.” But I just completed a key manufacturer’s rite of passage: I order a 24″ x 80″ retractable sign hyping my boxes, just so I can stand in its shadow. It feels so … grown-up.
I’m not officially announcing our 2017 releases ’cause we’re not 100% what they’ll be yet. But I will be bringing a box full of experiments and prototypes, which should be amusing, assuming my sketchy demo builds survive the road trip. I’m also bringing a couple of new DIY guitars that I haven’t shared here yet.
I’m not really up to speed yet on what new gear to expect, so I haven’t yet put together a must-see list. Is there anything you are particularly eager to check out? Anything I should know about? Thanks in advance for your tips!
Here’s an overview video that my pals at Premier Guitar shot at the NAMM show last January.
As always, I’m grateful to the friends who helped make this happen, especially Miko Mader from M1, my distributor, and Tony Lott, who oversaw production at the Cusack Music facility in Michigan. In addition to displaying superhuman patience during the long development period, Miko and Tony made many suggestions that improved my original designs. Thanks also to my pal Tom Menrath, who introduced me to Miko and Tony. (Tom used to work at Vintage King, but now he’s with pro audio champs Cutting Edge Audio and Video.)
I’ve posted demo videos for each pedal here before. But I’m reposting them after the jump in case you need a memory refresher. (I certainly do!) And I couldn’t resist including a couple of brag-worthy quotes from some of my early adopters. Thank you all!
How to tell holiday season is officially over: It’s time for NAMM 2016! And this will be the first time I attend not as a music magazine writer, but as a guy trying to sell guitar pedals. Or as Ray Liotta put it in Goodfellas: “Just another schnook.”
Not like I can afford a proper booth or anything. I’ll just be wandering around with a sack of goods like some frickin’ crack dealer. I’ll have a pedalboard with new four new releases (plus a couple of surprises) on display at the Vintage King booth in Hall A. But sadly, it won’t be hooked up to anything — there just isn’t enough room for live pedal demos. However, my awesome friends at Voodoo Lab will have my new Filth Fuzz in the demo pedalboard at their booth. (No business connection there — they’re just doing me a favor ’cause they’re cool.) So you can stop by and try it out while sampling Voodoo Lab’s latest and greatest.
If you’re attending NAMM and would like to check out my stuff — or just meet and say hi — drop me a note. I’ll be at the show Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday. (Sorry, I can’t help obtain passes. I had to scuffle for my own like … a regular schnook.)
But I’m skipping the show on Friday. Friday night I’ve got a gig at Taix restaurant in Los Angeles, performing my solo looping material and sharing the bill with my longtime pals, Double Naught Spy Car. I haven’t played L.A. in several years, and this is the first time playing solo. I’ll be stoked if folks stop by.
And during the day, I’m teaching a master class at LACM, where my dear pal Adam Levy oversees the guitar department. The focus is modes — or rather, my irreverent crackpot theories about the most musically profitable ways to regard and use modes. I’ve been kicking around these notions for many years, and I’ll probably adopt them into a tonefiend post soon.
I hope to see some old friends and make some new ones. So don’t be a stranger!
Ace sideman and gear demo producer Pete Thorn stopped by and made my pedals sound really good — though a killer Magnatone helped.
I spent the weekend hyping my stompboxes at the long-running LA Amp Show. It was my first visit, and it was a blast in every regard.
It’s a surreal scene. It’s not held at a convention center, but at a generic airport hotel. Exhibitors set up in plain old hotel rooms on three floors. And unlike NAMM, there are no noise restrictions — pity the poor hotel guests who weren’t amp freaks! It was wild, walking down a long hotel corridor, with some high-end amp and guitar blasting through each doorway. But within each room, there was an odd sense of intimacy. It could even be sexy, assuming your erotic ideal is the Line 6 Helix.
Gear highlights? I don’t know! I was on my own, glued to my pedalboard for two days. (Though I got to take a closer look at the Milkman amps crafted by my San Francisco neighbor Tim Marcus.)
But I did get to share Vintage King’s suite with several cool brands: Moog, whose Minifooger pedals I reviewed for Premier Guitar (and loved). Also there: Magnatone. I was plugged into a magnificent Super Fifty-Nine (which I also reviewed and loved). New to me, though, were two killer models from Jackson Ampworks.
It was great to see my onetime boss, Jim Crockett — the man who invented the guitar magazine
But I can tell you two non-gear highlights: For the first time since the late ’80s, I got to hang out with Jim Crockett, who founded Guitar Player in 1967, inventing the guitar mag.
Jim ran the show when the mag hired me in 1988. It was my first real job — till then, I’d only worked as a guitar teacher. Jim was so cool, going out of his way to welcome the nervous new guy, and providing many pats on the back.
The magazine got sold not long after I started, and has changed corporate hand many times since. So while I only worked with Jim for a few months, I’ve spent the last several decades listening to everyone moan, “Man, it was so much more fun when Jim was here.”
Thanks Jim — I’ll never forget your kindness.
Also unforgettable: the mad yo-yo skills of Vintage King’s Dan Serper. Clearly, raging 7-string pro-metal guitar-playing isn’t his only talent! (The background noise is amps blasting from adjacent rooms.)
UPDATE: I just posted detailed pedal descriptions at gorepedals.com
Anyone going to the big LA Amp Show this weekend? I’ve never been, though I’ve heard it’s a blast. (Literally: Unlike at NAMM, exhibitors set up in separate hotel suites, reportedly without noise restrictions.) I always like geeking out at musical instrument trade shows, but this one is special for me: It’s my pedal premiere, the public debut of my next four stompboxes. They’re not shipping quite yet (except Duh, available here), though they’ll be out in time for a crunchy-as-hell Kwanzaa.
The pedals pictured may look like my usual sketchy handmade stuff, but they’re actually slick factory-made versions, painstakingly styled to look like sketchy handmade stuff. (Michigan’s Cusack Effects is my manufacturer.) They sound like my handmade prototypes, but are less likely to break every 15 minutes.
I’ll be showing them off in the Vintage King suite. (They’re my production partners, and for now, my sole retailer, though the pedals will eventually make their way to hip guitar shops.) Magnatone, Jackson Ampworks, and Moog pedals will also share the VK suite, so my pedals will be in lofty company.
I’ve already written about Filth, Cult, and Cult Germanium Channel, though I haven’t yet finished their demo videos. (If you’ve spent any time on this site or my YouTube channel, you’ve heard them.) But I think this is the first time I’ve mentioned Gross Distortion, a twisted new take on a cool old crunch circuit. Here’s a demo I just made:
… and here’s how I describe it on the upcoming product page:
There’s never been a distortion pedal quite like Gross—so it needs an explanation.
At its heart, Gross is a simple, one-transistor distortion from the same family tree as the Electra circuit. This simple yet powerful effect was built into Electra guitars in the late ’70s, and was later adopted by many boutique stompbox builders. For good reason: It’s a lively, dynamically responsive circuit with less compression than most modern IC-based distortion pedals. The transistor boosts the level, and then the signal hits a pair of clipping diodes, which provide the signature distortion.
Every diode combination sounds slightly different. In fact, several boutique pedal companies have based their businesses on creating Electra derivatives with slightly varied diode choices. (Just Google “Electra distortion clone.”)
Gross isn’t an Electra clone. I’ve changed parts and values for a fatter sound and even greater dynamic response. I also added an active 2-band tone control—something seldom, if ever combined with primitive distortion like this. The distortion isn’t too “gainy.” It’s more about definition than sheer power—one reason it pairs well with other gain pedals. The character of your guitar and fingers always comes through.
The oddest feature is the diode section. Instead of a fixed diode pair, two 12-position rotary switches select from 24 diodes for 78 possible diode combinations! An additional switch adds a third diode for asymmetric distortion, which makes156 possible shades. My target number was 144—that’s why I called it Gross, though that may have happened the other way around.
Some combinations are as different as night and day. Others are only as different as noon and 12:05. But this network of germanium, silicon, and LED diodes provides many crunch colors.
With its labeled and detented selector knobs, you can call up favorite settings onstage. But for me, Gross’s forte is as a studio tool. It’s great for “texturizing” guitar overdubs—just spin the dials till you find a tone that sits perfectly in the track. It’s especially useful for doubling.
Gross Distortion was created in San Francisco and is built in Michigan by skilled craftspeople earning a fair wage. Available soon from Vintage King!
TO USE: Set the desired gain and level. Grab the big knobs and start spinning. Toggle the +1 switch frequently for asymmetric distortion—the changes can be dramatic! When you hear a cool tone, refine it with the bass and treble knobs. (Note: the higher the gain setting, the more dramatic the diode-tone contrast.)
I just started a Tonefiend Instagram feed, ’cause I know there’s not enough junk in your inbox. If you’re an Instagram user, feel free to follow. (Or just friend me on Facebook, where all the Instagram images also appear. I’m not picky—I’ll friend anyone, at least till they start posting links to $19 Prada handbag knockoffs.)
Often I don’t post here at tonefiend.com till I’ve cobbled together a relatively substantial item, which means the site can fester for weeks without an update. But for better or worse, I plan to post a steady stream of square cell phone pics compelling images and trivial pithy thoughts on Instagram/FB/Twitter.
On Instagram, I’m starting out with two weekly posts. Both are pretty silly, but each has inspired some surprisingly cool conversations. The first series is “Name That Gear,” which is simply a close-up shot of some music gizmo, but with some telling detail that reveals its identity. Not much too it, but it can be fun.
Page vs. Wagner: Who’d Win in a Fight?
The other recurring item is “Who’d Win in a Fight?” These are deliberately absurdist: The first post matched Jimmy “Hammer of the Gods” Page against Richard “Twilight of the Gods” Wagner. But amazingly, it inspired a long, fascinating, and drop-dead funny Facebook conversation. (Thanks for my wife for suggesting both ideas.)
Naturally, I’ll also be using those feeds to shamelessly flog my music and gear. I’m going to be showing the first five Joe Gore Pedals stompboxes at the LA Amp Show in Van Nuys, California on October 3rd and 4th—just a couple of weeks from now! The product announcements aren’t quite ready yet, but trust me—I bombarding you with them very soon. 🙂
Awesome! I just received production prototypes for my next three stompbox releases, in the wake of last month’s launch of my Duh Remedial Fuzz. I’m still making minor tweaks, but these should be available in just a few weeks. Whee!
Filth is a freaky joystick fuzz. Cult is my oddball take on Rangemaster-style single-transistor overdrive. It’s my absolute favorite distortion device, and the same one heard in many of my videos and gear reviews. The Cult Germanium Channel supplements this simple but deadly circuit with extra controls and an active EQ stage. (Baby skunk sold separately.)
Filth. I love whack-job fuzz boxes like the Z. Vex Fuzz Factory and the countless “sick fuzz” pedals it’s inspired over the last two decades. But here my goal was to create one with a higher percentage of “likely to use” settings — I wanted to make it easier to find the good stuff. Topologically, the circuit’s nothing tricky — basically a Fuzz Face descendent coupled with an extra JFET boost stage (though it doesn’t sound remotely like any Fuzz Face you’ve ever heard). The main innovation is the x/y control, which jiggers the transistor biasing, producing a broad array of timbres. It’s not a conventional tone control, though it’s arranged so that it’s easy to summon smooth, chubby tones or angry, brittle ones.
There was a lot of interest in this a couple of years ago when Fuzz Box Girl posted a demo (apparently no longer online) of one of my handmade ones. She focused on the pedal’s maximum-gain, My Bloody Valentine side, which was fine — Filth can definitely make your amp melt like a Salvador Dali timepiece. But now it’s easier to dial in crisp, lower-gain tones.
I’m making two Filth versions: the joystick model [pictured], and one with three conventional knobs. They sound identical — only the interfaces differ. The three-knob is good if you want to mark an exact setting for use onstage, while the joystick is more fun when concocting new sounds. (I don’t know the exact pricing yet, but the joystick model will cost more, because that’s an expensive part!)
I’m far from the first builder to create a joystick stompbox, but you usually encounter them on crazy noisemaker effects, or deployed as conventional EQ controls. I’m not aware of another pedal where it regulates the fuzz’s fundamental timbre this way. But then, I don’t get out as much as I should.
Cult. If you’ve seen my videos or heard my audio demos, you’ve probably heard Cult. I’ve built it into several guitars (while others have a built-in Duh fuzz). It’s a one-germanium-transisor boost descended from the Dallas Rangemaster of the 1960s, though the apple has rolled far from the tree: All part values differ, the EQ profile is modernized, and the gain control works in an unconventional way. But like a Rangemaster, it boasts spectacular dynamic response and electrifying tones that crackle with presence.
To my (admittedly odd) ear, no other distortion sounds as bitchin’ as a single-transistor boost between a good guitar and a great amp. The weird thing is, while most players know the countless ’60s rock tracks produced with such primitive boosters, many have never tried this sort of circuit. I love faithful Rangemaster clones, and I love many of the variations I’ve explored over the last five years. But Cult is my very favorite recipe.
Cult Germanium Channel. This one pairs the Cult circuit with relatively modern active EQ/boost stage, with proper tone controls that don’t suck tone. The added circuitry sacrifices a touch of Cult’s explosive presence, but it provides a greater range of tones. There’s also more gain on tap, so it’s better for those high-testosterone rawk tones that I’m far too much of an prissy, effete San Franciscan to use myself.
Thanks a Lott. As mentioned, these are manufactured by Cusack Music in Michigan, under the expert eye of engineer Tony Lott. Cusack builds pedals for numerous boutique brands you know, many of whom prefer to keep the fact a secret. But I’m proud of the relationship, because Tony and his team improve everything I submit. (More about the collaborative process below. It’s fascinating stuff, assuming you’re a geek — which I do assume, since you’re here.)
![My NorCal crew [L-R]: Xander Soren, the mastermind in charge of music apps at Apple (and a fine player); Talking Head and producer extraordinaire Jerry Harrison; some schnook; engineer, producer, producer, and cool guy Travis Kasperbauer.](https://tonefiend.com/wp-content/uploads/13.-Smart-Guys-1.jpg)
How to tell holiday season is officially over: It’s time for NAMM 2016! And this will be the first time I attend not as a music magazine writer, but as a guy trying to sell guitar pedals. Or as Ray Liotta put it in Goodfellas: “Just another schnook.”
