Crowther Audio
Crowther Audio’s Paul Crowther is one of the godfathers of the boutique stompbox movement. He built his first Hot Cake overdrive in 1976, when
he was the drummer for Split Enz. The design is still considered a classic. |
In the relatively young business of boutique
pedals, Paul Crowther could be fairly
regarded as a grizzled veteran. He built
the first version of his signature pedal,
the Hot Cake, in 1976 while laying drum
tracks with legendary New Zealand prog/punk/new wave unit Split Enz. Perhaps
it was the unique perspective of watching
guitarists struggle with tone from the
drum riser that ultimately drove Crowther
to build the now legendary and revered
Hot Cake. But his investigations were
founded on a fascination with the circuitry
of sound that predated his days as a professional
musician.
“After hearing the Rolling Stones’
‘Satisfaction’ on the radio, I just had to
make a fuzz box,” Crowther recalls. “I
built the first one from a magazine project,
using four germanium transistors. It
had a volume control but no gain control.
That was the first time I ever made a circuit
with solid-state parts. It had quite a
long sustain, but cut off abruptly, because
it used a ‘Schmitt trigger’ circuit—definitely
a one-note-at-a-time unit!”
But even then, Crowther was looking for
ways to address musical needs beyond
what a fuzz or wah could do. “I was playing
drums in a covers band, and we were
learning the Hollies’ ‘On a Carousel.’ I
made a box to give a guitar that resonant,
banjo-like sound in the intro. It had a
six-position switch for different resonant
frequencies, and it used a big radio-choke
inductor. It also had a control for adding
the low frequencies back in. It distorted
just a little bit, too, and our lead guitarist
used it for all sorts of things. I called it a
Herbert Box for some obscure reason.”
When Crowther finally got around to
building the Hot Cake, he’d worked on
tone circuits for everything from wah pedals
to organs. But Crowther ultimately
relied on his ears to perceive the needs
that the Hot Cake addressed—essentially
how to make a guitar signal hotter
and more distorted without sacrificing
the best and most essential parts of the
guitar-amplifier tone equation.
“The initial idea was to make a preamplifier
circuit where the undistorted component of
the sound has a flat response, but where the
distorted component has reduced high frequencies.
The overall effect of this is to make
the sound spectrum of the distortion similar
to the guitar sound. I think it has always been
popular because guitarists find that their tone
doesn’t radically change when they switch
in the Hot Cake. It also handles chords quite
well and has low self-generated noise.”
As the slow expansion of Crowther’s product
line illustrates, he pursues a new design
only when he’s interested or perceives
an opportunity to fill a hole that other
stompbox makers haven’t. Such are the
origins of the Prunes & Custard, a harmonic
generator-intermodulator (many mistake it
for an envelope filer) that has found many
fans among bass players and adventurous
guitarists like Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy.
“I wanted to make something that didn’t just
clip the waveform, but was more interesting,”
says Crowther. “With the P&C, which
I first made in 1994, the waveform doubles
back on itself, amplitude-wise, a few times. I
have since heard about a synthesizer module
called a wave multiplier, which does something
similar—although I did come up with
the P&C circuit quite independently.”
More recently, Crowther introduced the
Double Hot Cake to address the needs of
players that use multiple overdrives to expand
their tone palette onstage—particularly those
using two Hot Cakes. In typical Crowther
fashion, however, the Double Hot Cake adds
dimension that a simple two-overdrive setup
could not. “I finally came up with the idea
of an arrangement where, when both Hot
Cakes were switched on, Hot Cake A would
drive Hot Cake B, but Hot Cake A’s controls
would have no effect, and A’s Drive would be
controlled by an extra Drive pot. I also added
an extra clipping stage in between A and B, so
that it goes a little bit into fuzz world and adds
an extra mid boost. Hotcake A is the slightly
less edgy ‘bluesberry’ version, while B is the
normal old circuit.”
Like any good engineer (or drummer, for
that matter), Crowther doesn’t come off as
sentimental about a so-called Golden Age
of stompboxes. He likes what works, what’s
useful, and what makes more interesting
music. He does, however, see good analog
circuits as a ticket to achieving a more musical
signal chain. “There is something rather
appealing about a fuzz circuit that uses
germanium transistors. And there is also
something quite subtle in the nonlinearity of
a tube that makes for a less clinical sound.
I believe it produces a very subtle intermodulation
distortion that can help bring the
sound of an electronic instrument to life.”
One also gets the feeling that Crowther
may have a few surprises up is sleeve yet. “I
did try to make an electronic Leslie in 1973.
It was not too successful, but it sure made
for an interesting tremolo. There could be
something there. And there are a few other
ideas spinning around in my head.”
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