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Austin, TX - In March 2014 The Deli's Stompbox Exhibit - a free, interactive, in-the-headphones display of guitar effect pedals - will travel to Austin for its first official involvement in the SXSW's Music Gear Expo, part of the big music festival hosted by the Texan city that week. ... Click on the title for more
The greatest pitfall of many boutique pedals is over-indulgence; putting together a pedal that is physically and sonically unique enough to stand apart from its competition and simultaneously triumphs as a marvel of effect trailblazing is no easy task. This often warrants inclusion of too many clashing features within a single housing, which is why I was so surprised by the Dutch Kazoo’s approach to the fuzz pedal. Its simplicity piqued my interest, and its attention to detail instantly won me over.... Click on the title for more
One of the most fun tricks we learned in our youth from great indie bands like The Pixies and R.E.M is to use the guitar's pickup switches to turn the long notes on-and-off, which generates some sort of manually controlled square tremolo effect.
But what about having a stompbox that does exactly that and adds some extra features to it? Enter Memento, a prototype Dwarfcraft Devices presented at Winter NAMM 2014. This is a simple pedal for the creative guitarists, that features a "Kill" footswitch on the right - which doesn't lock and turns the sound off when pushed - and a "Recall" one on the left - which basically has the function to loop whatever on/off pattern you created with the Kill button.... Click on the title for more
One of the coolest new product we saw at NAMM was right in our own booth down in Hall E - yes, we were in Anaheim with our Stompbox Exhibit featuring 11 boutique manufacturers.
Stomp Labs, a Canadian manufacturer, debuted its first pedal, the MaX O.D., part of an upcoming series called "XPressWay," which is said to produce "the world's first fully expression enabled guitar pedals."
The MaX O.D. sounds good, but what's really mind blowing about it is what it lets you do to control it - something that opens a lot of creative options for the guitarists with experimental inclinations.
If you connect an expression pedal to this baby, you'll be able to do a couple of things you can't do with any other pedal: tapping once on any of the three knobs (Volume, Gain and Tone) activates the control through the expression pedal, while tapping twice on any of them activates a "reverse" control - i.e. the knob will act as if it's 100% up when the pedal is at 0% and vice versa. A green light on top of the knob indicates normal control, a blue one reversed control.
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There is obviously a competition among stompbox manufacturers these days to see who can build the guitar pedals with the smallest footprint, and it seems like Chinese builder MOOER is comfortably in the lead. After releasing, in recent years, a ridicolous amount of tiny rectangular pedals for every taste (called the "Micro" series), MOOER just announced they will present a new series of even smaller stompboxes at NAMM 2014, called Spark Series.
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When it comes to melody, Brooklyn’s The Stationary Set is anything but shy. Their brand of electro pop is dramatic and soulful – these 5 dudes are not afraid to get feely and they’re mindful of said feeliness. On their Facebok page, it’s mentioned that they strive "to make the 'pop' in pop music less of a dirty word." Their cover of Pat Benetar's "We Belong" is an embodiment of this; pulsating, hazy electro lends the ‘80s classic new depth. The electronic touches that pepper their sound are never isolating, they just expand it. In fact, The Stationary Set finds their sound at its best when let loose within a large space. And, since forming in 2009, they've had their fair share of big venue performances. They shared the stage with Phoenix and Mumford & Sons and most recently played a sold out show at Highline Ballroom along with January Jane. The band is recording an album over the course of the winter, so stay tuned for more warm and fuzzy goodness.... Click on the title for more
