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The Retro-Sonic board at the Montreal SBE 2017

Cars and garages can do weird things to men, and Tim Larwill of Retro-Sonics knows a thing or two about that.

The Ottawa based engineer began his career as a vintage car fixer, soon combining the passion for the automobiles of the ’60s and ’70s with the one for the rock sound that defined those same decades: garage rock.

Slowly, garage rock overtook the… garage in the list of passions, and Tim began playing guitar in a revival rock band. This, in turn, sparked an interest for vintage stompboxes. Retro-Sonic is the child of that passion.

The first pedal he designed was the Retro-Sonic Chorus, a recreation of the [BOSS] 1976 CE-1 using the original analog Bucket Brigade device. The response to that pedal, that as of today remains the most popular stompbox of the line, was overwhelming, and drove Tim to create a series of pedals inspired to classic circuits of the past, including an Analog Delay based on the DM-2 circuit, a Phaser based on the classic 4 stage Script circuit of the PH1-r, and the unmissable Tube Screamer emulation, called Eight-0-Eight Overdrive.

Check out Retro-Sonic’s full line below,  to hear/see the video demo, click on the images!