5 Baller Pedal Companies That Aren't JHS
Okay, there’s a lot of negativity in the world right now. I get it. You turn on the news in the morning, and then you immediately turn it back off, because why ruin a perfectly good day? Well, I want to take some time today to shift focus to the good stuff, and by that I mean good people. In this article, I want to brag on five pedal companies that I'm incredibly thankful for.
For the record, this is maybe my favorite aspect of the pedal community. Yes, we’re all running a business. Yes, we’re technically in competition. But are we? Because it’s one of the most collaborative creative communities I’ve had the pleasure to be a member of. I can’t think of another industry where you have your top competition on speed dial so you can call them with a question, or you have annual bowling parties, or you can sincerely brag on your friend’s awesome pedal as being better than the one you made. Because #friendship and #pedals.
Basically, this ain’t Slugworth and Willy Wonka, folks.
That said, this blog is going to be less about the pedals and more about the people who created them, because they’re all baller.
Robert Keeley / Keeley Electronics
First up, I'm super thankful for Robert Keeley of Keeley Electronics. He's a hero of mine. I remember when I first got into the pedal business, looking at his designs, looking at how he modified things, and being so fascinated with how good his pedals sounded.
Then, in 2014, it happened. I saw him at NAMM across the room. Now, Robert had been away from the scene for a while and I was super intimidated, but I had to meet my hero. I know they tell you to never meet you heroes, but I respectfully disagree. I walked up to him and within 15 minutes, we're over in the dining area and he's downloading tons of information to me, helping me, giving me tips. Apparently that’s not enough, because he calls me later, and even comes down to Kansas City and hangs out.
And that’s why you do meet your heroes. Then you get to hang out with them in your pedal shop.
Since then we've collaborated, we've helped each other, and he's amazing. I got to do the Steak and Eggs 2-in-1 with him, and it’s one of the most enjoyable collaborations I’ve ever done. On top of that, so many of his pedals are just fantastic.
Plus, his story is iconic. This is Cinderella Man with guitar pedals. He goes off the scene and ends things on a major high, Hayao Miyazaki-style. And then he makes this amazing comeback? Because you can’t keep a good pedal maker down. And now, in 2020, he's bigger than he's ever been. That's a huge inspiration to me as a pedal builder.
It’s pretty much impossible to pick a favorite pedal here, because literally everything he’s made is fantastic, but I will say that the Mag-Echo is my favorite delay. In this case “Mag” is short for “Magnetic,” but it’s pretty epic to imagine that it’s also short for “Magnum P.I.”
Philippe Herndon / Caroline Guitar Company
Next up is Philippe Herndon of Caroline Guitar Company, or as he says in a few products, Caroline Corporation.
I heard of Philippe when his first pedal dropped back in 2012, maybe ’13. It was called the Wave Cannon. We got on the phone, and I had to have one, and we started talking about the circuit. The whole thing just turned into a major geek-fest about how I had a similar pedal, and what his was, etc. Basically, we hit it off. This was a bromance for the ages.
Over the years, I’ve loved watching his brand. I love what he's built. I love the way that his pedals sound, but the thing that I'm most thankful for with Philippe is that he pushes me. His
pedals are beautiful in every way. He has amazing, perfect branding, and I look up to that and I love it. Do yourself a favor. Do a quick Google search for his Hawaiian Pizza pedal. That thing should rightfully be under bulletproof glass at the Louvre. I can't stop looking at it. I need an extra one just to stare at, eye level, while I’m playing the other pedal on the ground.
Two other great options from the Caroline Guitar Company are the Vegetarian Pizza, which I was very fortunate to get out of the limited run, and the Kilobyte Lo-Fi Delay.
Thank you, Philippe, for challenging me and making me want my pedals to not look horrible. That’s real friendship.
Julie Robbins and Jamie Stillman / EarthQuaker Devices
Another company that I am thankful for is EarthQuaker Devices. Specifically, Julie and Jamie who run that company. They’re what you call good people.
The first time I ever played one of their pedals was the Dispatch Master. I was working at a sound check for a band called Civil Twilight, and I played through it, fell in love with it, and wanted to marry it. You know how that goes.
I met them a year or two later at the NAMM show. When I met Jamie, I knew instantly that he was awesome. There was no doubt. Then we started talking about old Fuzz Faces and circuits, and since they’re a little bit older of a company, he had a lot of wisdom and he was never afraid to freely offer any advice he had on whatever project I was working on. That’s priceless.**
**To paraphrase a popular Mastercard commercial: “One ticket to NAMM? $25. Meeting a truly open-handed pedal maker who happens to be the Stephen Hawking of guitar pedals? Priceless.”
To this day, myself and my general manager, Steve, talk to them constantly. Julie's always giving advice. We're giving advice. It’s beautiful. We just do this circular thing of helping each other out. And they are the best type of people in the entire world. They're totally able to give any info they have and to help in any way. They're very unselfish, and I'm really, really thankful for that.
If I was going to jam out on an EarthQuaker pedal, I’d definitely go with the Erupter, which is a fuzz circuit and is amazing. I’d also add in the Dispatch Master, because the only thing better than one awesome pedal is two awesome pedals.
And yeah, I'm thankful for these pedals, but I’m more thankful for the two people who made them.
Yoshi Ikegami / BOSS Pedals
It's hard not to be thankful for BOSS when you're standing in my shoes, because I basically started my company by modifying their circuits, learning their circuits, and falling in love with guitar pedals. You can 100% credit that to the great gear that BOSS created.
Things got a lot more real for me later, because I’ve become really good friends with the president of BOSS, Yoshi. I keep meeting him at trade shows, and he patiently answers all my insane questions about history and all the geeky circuit things I ask him, questions about paint colors, just total fanboy nerdom. He puts up with all of it. He's super helpful.
Then we collaborated on the Angry Driver, their first ever pedal collaboration. Feel free to just engrave that on my tombstone when I die, because I can’t think of a better legacy than that. “Josh Scott. Father of 3, Husband to Alice, first pedal collaborator with BOSS Pedals.” Yup, I think that pretty much covers it.
My conversations with Yoshi have been priceless in JHS Pedals’ journey forward. It’s no exaggeration to say that he helped shape JHS as a company, whether advising us in making good business decisions or just sharing these nuggets of wisdom so that we could keep the right mindset. I'm really, really thankful for him as a friend and for BOSS as a company, because I've learned so much from their attitude of giving information and paying it forward. You know how I talked about the pedal community at the beginning of this article, and gushed about how this is basically a lovefest of creative collaboration more than a cutthroat competition?
Yeah, Yoshi’s the guy who really taught me that.
To paraphrase Strong Band Man, asking me to pick a favorite BOSS Pedal is kind of like asking me, “What’s your favorite molecule of air you’ve breathed?” You gotta narrow it down. That said, here are a few classics I always go back to: The Bluesdriver, which is how I got into this. I fixed a BOSS Bluesdriver, and that's how I started a pedal company. Really.
Also, my favorite tap tempo delay ever is the BOSS DD-5. It’s a classic for a reason.
John Cusack / Cusack Music
Last, but most definitely not least. I am thankful for John Cusack of Cusack music.
Yeah, I know a lot of you are picturing John Cusack holding a boombox on the cover of Say Anything, but that’s the other John Cusack. I’m talking about my friend John who makes pedals and was not an unofficial member of the Brat Pack. Just to clarify.
I met John at one of these smaller-scale trade shows. Basically, the whole thing takes place in a hotel room, and you rent it out, and it's obnoxiously loud. In the midst of that insanity, we sat around and we just talked about history and gear. I remember when he told me that he basically invented tap tempo for tremolo, it blew my mind. Then he told me all the stories about how he worked for ZVex back in the day, designing for him while he had his own company on the side.
For a young, scrappy, and hungry** pedal maker, this was the definition of inspiring.
**Yeah, I’ve seen Hamilton. I don’t live under a rock.
John has been instrumental in my circuitry education. For real. He produces a lot of our circuit boards in Michigan, plus he's fixed countless issues with production.
Case in point: after we had just released the Panther Cub, we heard a noise in the circuit board layout and we could not figure out where it was coming from. We send it to John and he tracks it down. In the end, he comes up with a temporary fix involving an empty root beer can where he cuts it with a razorblade, lays it on the circuit board, and stops the interference. Then he sends it back. We had two choices: drink an inordinate amount of root beer, or figure out a way to replicate the fix. We ended up replicating his solution with parts we had on hand, but there was going to be a happy ending to that story in either case. One just involved a lot of root beer.
Later on, I had the idea for the Muffaletta, which is another collaboration for the ages. I got the analog circuitry perfect, and then John invented the switching system. Long story short, I am indebted to John and his genius work. Honestly, I think he's one of the most underappreciated designers out there.
I love his tap-out Delay pedal. It has the tap-out jack, but you can use it in the standard mode as well. But his pièce de résistance has gotta be the Screamer Fuzz. This is one of the cleverest pedals I've ever seen. People have always used a Tube Screamer with a Fuzz Face, so he cut out the middleman and combined them into one pedal. And it's fantastic.
Basically, John, you're awesome. Thank you for being you.
So, I try to keep the JHS Show really positive. I know that, to some people, I come off a little too positive about guitar pedals, kind of like Pollyanna, but I hope that hearing about these baller friends I have in the pedal community helps you understand that I visualize and understand pedals in a different way. I don't just look at an EarthQuaker pedal. I see Jamie and Julie and the bowling parties we throw every year at NAMM. I don't just see a Keeley compressor. I see Robert Keeley, my hero who patiently answers my goofy questions even after all these years. And I don't just look at a BOSS pedal and think about the amazing history of the company; I see Yoshi and the other friends that I made in Japan when I went over to work on our collaboration.
I love guitar pedals. That’s just a fact. Like, if I were Scrooge McDuck, I would probably dive into a vault of pedals with an old school swimsuit on. But the pedals themselves aren’t the best part of my collection. The best part is that each pedal in my collection has a memory, and there are literally thousands of more stories I could tell you about my friends, the pedal makers.
So, yeah, I'm super positive, and that’s probably not going to change, to be honest.
I want to leave you with a quote from one of my favorite writers, C. S. Lewis. “Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art, like the universe itself...It has no survival value; rather, it’s one of those things which give value to survival.”
So, take a moment today, tell your friends that you love them and are thankful for them. Give your kids an extra hug. Give your spouse an extra kiss. At the end of the day, this is what matters.
