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State of the Stomp

Busted stompbox? Here are tips from a tech on when to repair and when to despair.

It is a cruel world out there, and no quarter is offered to your pedals, no matter how carefully you proceed from gig to gig. Just like an amp or guitar, your pedalboard can become an instrumental part of what you do as a player. But broken pedals are natural given they’re instruments that you step on, so getting them repaired is something we’ll all need to confront. While we’d love to have nothing wasted and everything working, whether or not something can be fixed reasonably is not always cut and dried.

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When Louis Cato received this Univox LP-style as a gift in high school, it needed some major TLC. A few years later, it got some practical upgrades and now makes regular appearances with Cato on The Late Show.

Photo by Scott Kowalchyk

The self-described “utility knife” played drums with John Scofield and Marcus Miller and spent time in the studio with Q-Tip before landing on Stephen Colbert’s show as a multi-instrumentalist member of the house band. Now, he’s taken over as the show’s guitar-wielding bandleader and is making his mark.

It’s a classic old-school-show-biz move: Bring out the band, introduce them one by one, and build up the song to its explosive beginning. It’s fun, dramatic, audiences love it, and that’s how every The Late Show with Stephen Colbert taping starts.

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The author found his mint-condition 1966 Vibro Champ on eBay, completely original with the Oxford 8EV speaker.

Extolling the virtues and sharing some easy mods for Fender’s littlest vintage bruiser.

This month, let’s talk about the black- and silver-panel Fender Champ, the tiniest of vintage Fender amps. Weighing only 22 pounds, it is super portable and easy to carry wherever my music takes me. It’s actually so small that I put it between my kids in the car’s backseat when we go on vacations. Before I share what I’ve learned about the Champ, let’s have a quick look in the rearview mirror.

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In a world of widely shared components, don’t just dare to be different. Insist on it. Aesthetics matter.

Regardless of the number of companies swimming in the pedal pond, I often find myself thinking about aesthetic diversity. We builders tend to all use the same components when designing our devices. It’s how we use them that is the subject here. And I’d like to focus primarily on the external components and how they are presented. Finish and graphics play a big part in a company’s branding and identity. However, I’d like to almost solely talk about knobs, footswitches, toggles, and LEDs. These are the most common things that you’ll see on a pedal.

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Lauren Audio’s latest puts Neve’s coveted 1073 circuit in a stompbox.

After our columnist had a serious accident, respected indie pedal maker James Mackey organized the community to help. Here’s his story.

Summer 2022 sure was crazy for me. Between trying to keep my small pedal business alive and juggling the few other hustles I have going to survive financially in this current economic climate, things were pretty hectic. Then, in August, I was involved in a serious car accident … a head-on collision. Thankfully, the airbag and seat belt saved my life. I stumbled out of the car, completely shocked and humbled to be in one piece after I saw the wreckage. While I will most likely be dealing with the resulting lumbar issues for the rest of my life, I can’t express how grateful I am to still be here.

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