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A local crew of modders showed off their tweaking chops as they brought a board of run-of-the-mill, off-the-shelf stompboxes from familiar brands. The catch was that they were all hot-rodded and tweaked for even more power and tone-shaping abilities. They changed out key elements and warped others to give the stock pedals a new, fantastically huge sound. By taking out the cheaply produced stock parts and replacing them with better quality parts—and sometimes parts of differing electronic values—Austin Hot Mods provided a whole new tonal palette and functionality to old pedals. austinhotmods.com
BeatBuddy
The stompbox drum machine was built out of founder David Packouz’s frustration of not being able to find an electronic drum accompaniment that enabled hands-free live control. The BeatBuddy comes with 200 songs that can be played on 10 different kits for ultimate tonal flexibility. With the accompanying software you can edit fills, rhythm changes, accent hits, tempo shifts, and of course, you can record your own drum tracks and keep up to date with BeatBuddy’s growing song library. $299 street mybeatbuddy.com
Bohemian Guitars
Brothers Adam and Shaun Lee of Johannesburg, South Africa, were inspired to start their own guitar line when they noticed their hometown vagabonds and buskers were repurposing garbage and making them into musical instruments. The brothers now call Atlanta home and have started their own trash-into-music company that utilizes metal oil cans as the guitar’s body. (They are often reinforced with a basswood frame for added stability and projection.) The rest of the instruments look and feel the same—wooden necks and fretboards, magnetic pickups, and Fender-style scale lengths. Most models go out the door under $300. bohemianguitars.com
Amzel Electronics Cheshire Cat
Bill Price showed off his latest rendition of his patent-pending Tone Evaporator pedal at this year’s expo. Price explains the Cat’s uniqueness: “One side of the signal goes into the adjustable low-pass filter while the other side remains unaffected. Both sides are mixed into the distortion section. Then the precision ‘evaporator’ circuit removes the clean filter sound by mixing the filtered signal out of phase with the distortion output.” Changes he made to this iteration of the pedal includes revamping of the control layout so he could cram things into a smaller, more pedalboard-friendly package, and usability of the controls is slightly improved as well. $248 street amzelelectronics.com
Engle Guitar Hammer
The Engle provides a guitarist the tonal clarity of a hammered dulcimer when playing single strings or chords, and also offers incredible rhythmic variations that aren’t possible when using just fingers or a pick. It features a cherry wood handle, stainless steel arm, and a polymer head. It can be used by right- or left-handed players and on acoustic or electric guitars. Players can also use the Soft Touch—Engle’s new interchangeable head made from a light-rubber coating—for warmer tones and an alternate rhythmic response. $30 street theengle.com
Escape Plan Electronics
Andy Greene handbuilds pedals out of his Lenoir, North Carolina shop where his goal is to create stompboxes that would be the envy of every guitarist at a price most players could afford. Shown here are two of his flagship effects—the Dirty Old Man Distortion and the Psycho Andy Deluxe Dual Distortion/Fuzz. The Dirty Old Man is a dual JFET op-amp-based distortion with cascading clipping stages that break up at different points, allowing for smooth, uniquely textured drive sounds throughout the sweep of the drive (filth) control. Crank the scowl and sneer controls and you can emulate an AM radio á la Richards’ “Street Fighting Man” tone. The Psycho also features an op-amp circuit but differs from the Old Man by using an asymmetrical clipping section feeding into a nasty ’60s-style velcro fuzz. Both circuits are completely independent of each other, so you can set your distortion / overdrive section to a nice crunchy rhythm sound, and then kick in the fuzz section for searing leads. escapeplanpedals.com
Fairfield Circuitry
The Quebec crew handbuilds “unique and original pedals designed to withstand the test of time, ours are made with love and hate.” While the chrome enclosures aren’t much to look at with their metallic color scheme and minimalistic graphics, the proof of Fairfield’s brilliance is under the collective hood of their stomps. They have some run-of-the-mill effects like an analog delay (Meet Maude), compressor (The Accountant) and an OD (The Barbershop) that appear to be cut-and-dry, but each has its own quirk. The delay has a random-delay-time modulation and both the compressor and overdrive have toggle switches for added tonal flexibility and options. Then you have their kick-it-on-but-beware pedals like the Unpleasant Surprise, an experimental fuzz/gate that “turns all dynamics to shit. Strangely, it feels very natural.” And finally they offer a passive feedback loop pedal called the Operator?! that “can be aggressive, difficult to control and frankly, unpleasant. Perfect for the experimentalist in all of us.” fairfieldcircuitry.com
Fretboard Explorer Solene
Made of a three-foot aluminum tube, seven strings, and meandering stainless steel frets, the Solene was conceptualized as a new playing area for the two-handed tapping technique. Other features include a familiar 25.5" scale length, a 9/32" string spacing, two rail pickups, and it weighs just under four pounds. $850 street fretboardexplorer.com
Jamstik
Fresh off a successful Kickstarter campaign, the “SmartGuitar” company is now selling their convenient and portable 6-string. They bill the Jamstik as not only as a viable instrument with real frets and strings, but also as a learning tool because it comes with their jamTutor app that provides engaging content and instant feedback. Other cool attributes include Wi-Fi capabilities to connect to most smart devices, it can mimic a whole host of instruments like a piano, drums, harp, sitar, and it has low-latency MIDI capabilities. $249 street jamstik.com
Loog Guitars
Conceived in 2010 by Rafael Atijas as a thesis project while at NYU, Loog’s concept is to provide unique and well-designed learning tools for players of all ages and abilities. Another pillar of Atijas’ company is sustainable design by using wood only from responsibly managed forests that are committed to quality and safety standards that meet or exceed government regulations. The three electric models shown above are all outfitted with a lipstick-style pickup and street for under $200. Loog also has a line of acoustic models that come with interchangeable colored pickguards. loogguitars.com
MC Systems
Designed in Australia, MC Systems’ new Apollo range of effects combines rugged looks with an innovative functional twist. Each pedal has V-Switch true-bypass switching technology allowing players to enable the effect with dual intensity, dependent on how hard you stomp it. The dynamic response is applied to the most logical parameter for the particular effect—like the Overdrive’s drive control, the Chorus’ depth control, and the Delay’s regeneration knob. The second footswitch gives access to other parameters such as overdrive level, chorus rate, and delay time. The Apollo range includes: Dynamic Drive, Fuzz, Distortion, Phaser, Delay, Glass Chorus, Hybrid Chorus and String Reviver. mcsystemsmusic.com
Mod Kits DIY
Everyone’s favorite kit company was in Austin showing off their buy-it-and-build-it stompboxes including their just-released Contortionist II, which is an all analog, high octane fuzz box. Their DIY boxes are designed to give both novice and experienced musicians the chance to build their own amps and effects pedals. All the kits come with easy to follow instructions, a pre-drilled enclosure, all the necessary parts, and they use point-to-point wiring. All you need to provide are hand tools, a soldering iron, and solder. Most pedal kits street under $75. modkitsdiy.com
Moniker Guitars
The Austin-based company wanted to combine the smorgasbord of options at a buffet chain with the handmade, boutique-quality instruments of a custom shop. Players log onto Moniker’s site and choose one of nine body styles—seven guitars and two bass models—including semi-hollow and chambered options. As you move along the process you can select from dozens of colors, wood options, finish types, and pickups from the likes of Lollar, Seymour Duncan, TV Jones, and Moniker. All during the process you have an up-to-the-second price calculator and delivery-date estimate. Recent updates to Moniker’s you-decide-we-build program include previewing the actual slice of wood that will be used on your guitar. Typical builds land between the $1,200-2,000 range. monikerguitars.com
Try It Out
Like other grassroots music tradeshows, the Gear Expo allows players to bring their own axe to test drive pedals and amps. And if you came empty-handed, don’t worry, there were plenty of guitars on hand for musicians to pick up and pluck away on.
PRS
As a main sponsor of the expo, PRS had a booth and showed off their latest S2 offering—the Vela. Appointments include an asymmetric bevel-cut solid mahogany body, 25" scale length, 22-fret mahogany neck with rosewood fretboard, S2 locking tuners, nickel hardware, a PRS Plate-style bridge, and PRS-designed Starla humbucker (bridge) and Type-D single-coil (neck) pickups. $1,279 street prsguitars.com
Red Panda
The Detroit company build and design their pedals from an extensive background that dealt with modular software synthesizers. Their goal with each creation is to have “pedals that do one thing extremely well, be deep and flexible enough for you to find your own sound, and work well with other effects.” Their current lineup boasts four noisemakers: the Context—a transparent reverb—the Particle—a granular delay/pitch-shifter—the brand new Raster—a delay with pitch-shifting that’s integrated into the feedback loop—and the Bitmap— a bitcrusher with fractional bit reduction and sample rate modulation. The pedals range from $225-275. redpandalab.com
Ridgewing Guitar
The genesis of this company took shape nearly 30 years ago when Tim White set out to “discover the minimum volume of a full-sized professional-quality acoustic guitar while creating a design that allowed easy and instantaneous disassembly and reconstitution of the instrument.” After several one-off concept guitars including the highly regarded Chrysalis, White teamed up with MIT grad Arjun Mendhi where they set out to build a team of experts so they could finally bring their idea to the market on a commission-based scale. This past January marked the first completed builds under the Ridgewing name. Players can choose either an aluminum or carbon-fiber body wings that click together. Other options include deciding on having either a wood or composite neck, the inlay designs on the fretboard, finish colors, and the optional back fabric. All guitars come with wooden fretboards and can be broken down into a dozen pieces for carefree traveling inside a briefcase-like carrier (as seen in the upper right). Each guitar takes over 150 hours to build and typically costs between $5,800-7,300. ridgewing.com
ScreaminFX
Another Austin-based company that showcased at the expo was Seth Wilk and his company ScreaminFX. Wilk attended college with an undecided major teetering on either performance guitar or electrical engineering. Lucky for us, he decided to obtain his engineering degree and has been honing his skills and design aesthetics over the last ten years. In the last few years, he launched ScreaminFX with three requirements for all his stomps—they’d always be handmade, they’d feature analog circuitry, and they’d include a twist not seen or heard on other effects. At this year’s event he showed off three pedals including the Banshee Boost, the 1954 Fuzz, and the 1948 Fuzz. The Banshee is based on a circuit that boosts your sound and hits the front-end of your amp where you can either simply fatten your tone or it can add some trebly bite. The 1954 is a silicon-based fuzz that is throttled back a bit so you can still hear individual notes. Wilk added an inline buffer so you can use a wah before the fuzz and it has a built-in boost to keep your stage volume at unity. The 1948 is germanium-based fuzzbox and features the same additional buffer and boost that is inside the 1954. The pedals range from $124.99 to 199.99. screaminfx.com
Seymour Duncan
Another board hosted by the Deli’s Stompbox was none other than Seymour Duncan. At the show, SD brought their most recent pedals including the brand-spankin’ new Vise Grip and Pickup Booster. The Vise Grip is a studio-grade compressor designed for guitarists who want to take control of the dynamics of their sound, from a subtle smoothing-out of peaks and valleys to the most squished and pinched extremes. The Booster was designed to allow you to boost your signal without altering the character of your sound while also allowing you to access different pickup tones with the flip of the resonance switch. seymourduncan.com
Square Amps
Hometown hobbyist Matt Richards turns old, on-their-deathbed vintage radios from the 1930s and ’40s into tube amps by gutting the insides and refurbishing them with the components you’d find in handwired amps. Most of Richards’ amps use not only the built-in radio speakers, but he also provides output jacks on the back so you can actually gig or record with it. Since every radio he comes across is different and unique, each recreation is its own beast aesthetically and tonally, however, most of his amps—as of right now—have a 12AX7 preamp tube, 6V6 power tubes, and a 5Y3 rectifier tube. Many of them are cathode biased so you can swap in different tubes to suit your sound proclivities. Most of them rate between 8-15W and cost under $1,000. squareamps.com
String Jack
This small-but-impactful add-on is geared for players that want to explore a different approach to string bending—on electric or acoustics. String Jack’s site describes the mechanism’s effect “like bending the strings behind the nut. Simply position a String Jack(s) under the strings, find a tuning and the rest is up to your imagination. A single String Jack can span 2, 3 or 4 strings and can be placed in any combination on top of the fretboard. Jack up all the strings and you got yourself a Koto.” A kit with four String Jacks costs $28. fretboardexplorer.com
Journey Instruments
Journey’s Carbon Fiber OF660 turned heads and had onlookers furrowing their brows as they witnessed the Transformer-ish build-up and tear-down construction that makes this axe unique. This acoustic guitar is similar to the popular Voyage-Air that took the world by storm when it hit the big time by landing on Shark Tank twice and now they’re everywhere. The biggest difference between the two instruments is that the Voyage-Air’s neck folds down—via a metal hinge—on top of the body where it meets the body and it rests over the body while the OF660 has a patented removable neck system that allows it to collapse into a TSA-approved gigbag. The Voyage-Air comes with a backpack case that measures 22.5" x 17" x 12", which allows it to fit in most airplane compartments. The Journey case is 22" x 14" x 9"—making it a smidge bigger than most computer bags. Other features of the OF660 are a proprietary under-bridge pickup, upper-fret access thanks to the Scoopaway, bone nut and saddle, and a carbon-fiber fretboard. If you’re not into the carbon-fiber setup, don’t fret, Journey offers the same get-on-the-plane-and-gig technology in all-wood models feature sapele, cedar, and Sitka spruce tops. The list price on these instruments is $1,478.25. journeyinstruments.com
Uberchord
The German-born Uberchord is a mobile app with an audio-recognition technology that enables real-time listening and feedback just like a personal guitar teacher. The patent-pending algorithm took 20 months of development and enables a new guitar teaching method thanks to its extensive library of chords. It uses your iPhone’s built-in mic to recognize the chords you play and provides alternative picking/fretting options by transposing them on various spots of the fretboard. The intuitive nature of the app learns and remembers your personal progress and adapts its collections and recommendations based on your growth and tendencies. And of course, a guitar-based app isn’t complete without an onboard tuner! uberchord.com
Wampler Pedals
Released last month, Brian Wampler’s newest offering is the Plexi-Drive Deluxe that builds off the Standard. Upgraded features include an all-new active 3-band EQ stack (bass, middle, treble), the added bass boost option emulates the thump of a 4x12 stack, a new bright switch adds highs to a dark guitar, and a pre-gain soft-click switch that is voiced that “famous overdrive with pronounced mids.” The MSRP is $239.97. wamplerpedals.com
Austin’s biggest music festival has added auxiliary showcases and attractions since its inception in 1988. Starting in 1994 they included a SXSW Film and Multimedia Conference—the following year it was divided into two separate events—and since then they’ve added comedy and technology components. In 2010, SXSW added a Gear Expo for gearheads to swarm the halls and try out new toys from industry stalwarts like PRS and Seymour Duncan to the local companies like Moniker Guitars and Square Amps.
Chris Kies has degrees in Journalism and History from the University of Iowa and has been with PG dating back to his days as an intern in 2007. He's now the multimedia manager maintaining the website and social media accounts, coordinating Rig Rundown shoots (also hosting and/or filming them) and product demos, and occasionally writing an artist feature, all while still shooting/editing video for NAMM-show coverage. Other than that, he spends time with his pitbull and enjoys non-guitar-related hobbies.
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