Well, things are starting to ramp up on the SouthpawFX workbench! It’s a bit like waiting for a bus, except there’s less people and there’s no need to leave the house, (except I will be leaving, more on that in a bit).
I could have made separate blogs and released them over the course of a week, but I’m just going to stick them all here in one longer blog. Sitting comfortably? Got ya coffee? Good, let’s begin…
FROM FIXING FIDDLES TO AN ANGRY SQUIRREL
I’ve recently been asked to put together a pedal for a good friend of mine and serial gig player, Mac (ALICE COOPERS NIGHTMARE, ROOSTERS CAT, BEYOND BLONDE).
Me and Mac go back a fair while, being ex-work coleagues and with him using my services to fettle some of his guitars in the past. Most recently, he had me install a piezo bridge in a cheap axe he had so he could get acoustic type sounds without having to change guitars part way through a set (or song).
Built a small piezo pre-amp for it and installed the lot with a push/pull tone knob to switch between the EMG’s and the piezo. After a bit of back and forth to sort out the action and some noise issues from the pre-amp, it’s now in his hands and by all accounts being both jingly-jangly and shouty metal in equal parts.
On Mac’s last visit to me, he was trying said guitar through the SouthpawFX pedalboard and I showed him one of my prototypes I was working on, namely a high-gain distortion with a separate boost that can be switched to act in front of the distortion or after. After a bit of discussion, we agreed I would put one together for him and the ‘Angry Squirrel’ was born! More to come as the parts arrive and I assemble it.
You’re going to the love the artwork for this one…
Check out Macs Bands here:
Alice Coopers Nightmare https://www.facebook.com/AliceCoopersNightmare
Beyond blonde https://www.facebook.com/beyondblonde
Roosters Cat https://www.facebook.com/RoostersCat/
TSUNAMI ANALOGUE DELAY
If anyone follows my Instagram/FB page, you may have seen a short video of a delay pedal I was playing around with, based loosely on the Deep Blue Delay by Mad Professor. Well, I decided it sounds interesting enough to put a couple together…
As well as the standard controls you would expect on a delay, I’ve also added a ‘DIRT’ control to introduce a little bit of distortion to the signal. This is a bit of a departure for me, as I usually like my delays to be icy clean, but it definitely opens up some new sounds to experiment with.
I’ve also added a momentary footswitch that pushed the delay into feedback/oscillation – not something you want to have on all the time, but a really cool effect to drop in and out. With an added switch to select between True-bypass and buffered/Tails output, it's going to be pretty sweet when finished. I just need to get some better looking shoes, cos I'm probably going to be gazing at them a lot.
SIN THETA BASS DRIVE PROTOTYPING
I’m also working on a Bass drive pedal for another good buddy, Craig (EX DEF CON ONE, XF11, and now of SIN THETA).
This one is really interesting, as I’m approaching it from a 1st principles sort of direction, rather than just cloning an existing pedal. Chances are, once it’s done it will be very similar to something that’s already out there – electrons flow the same way regardless of who you are and I’m unlikely to be using anything truly exotic in the way of components.
At the minute, I’m using the Cosmic goddess as a jumping off point - Essentially through, we’re shooting for a Bass drive pedal with similar functionality to a Darkglass Microtubes (Clean blend, Grit, EQ etc), but a bit more gain/fuzz on tap. Craigs brief was ‘an Angry Geddy Lee’, so I’ll let that mental image float about in your mind for now…
Check out Sin Theta here:
SIN THETA – Facebook https://www.facebook.com/SinThetaBand
SOUTHPAW FX IS MOVING!
Yep, so after many happy years in our current house, it’s now (almost) time to pack up the belongings and move to new digs. Fortunately it’s like 2 minutes away from where we are now and (more importantly) has a space I can make into a proper dedicated workshop. I’m very excited by the prospect of having all my tools neatly arranged on shadow boards, components neatly stored in labelled rack draws, having dedicated areas for pedal building, working on guitars and shooting videos, as well as being able to operate power tools and play my guitars at all hours of the day and night without disturbing my wife and children. It’s going to be man-cave heaven. Assuming that man was a nerd who played guitar and made pedals...
My wife is also looking forwards to me not making a mess in the house and was disturbingly enthusiastic to the (joking) suggestion that I set a hammock up in there.
I'll no doubt do some vlogging on my youtube channel as the new workshop comes together, but first lawyers have to do their stuff and many, many boxes must be filled with the precious things.
COSMIC GODDESS PRODUCTION RUN UPDATE
I teased this a little while back that I was making a short run of CG pedals for general sale. With everything else that happening it has stalled a little, but I’m hopeful I’ll have everything ready to put together in the next week or so. Rest assured as soon as they’re ready, I’ll be putting it out there on my FB and Instagram pages!
If you managed to get to this point, I commend your patience and thank you for reading. Till next time!
Cheers,
Bob - SouthpawFX