Visual Sound's Forgotten Pedal Line

Today I want to gush over one of the most overlooked pedal lines ever: GarageTone.

In 1995, a prolific pedal designer named Bob Weil started the company Visual Sound. They were one of the first pedal-makers to break through in the boutique market, and one of the first boutique style pedals I ever saw in a big box store like Guitar Center. They’ve released baller designs like the Route 66 overdrive compressor and the Jekyll and Hyde overdrive/distortion, which I believe is the first two-in-one pedal ever made. They cranked out the H2O Liquid Chorus & Echo (which I mentioned in a previous JHS Show episode for its crazy enclosure), the Visual Volume and the Visual Metal.

They also created the Truetone 1 Spot power adapter, which literally everyone owns. You could hang out with a sweet grandma who hasn’t left her house in fifteen years, and didn’t even know that electricity exists, let alone the electric guitar, and I guarantee you that she would have one of these in her junk drawer.

Bob ain’t messing around, y’all.

But he also isn’t one of those guys who rests on his laurels, so in 2009, Bob decided that he wanted to create the ultimate budget line of pedals. We're talking $40-$60 each. He wants them to be high quality metal enclosures and really solid circuit designs, and he does this with the help of effect circuit genius R.G. Keen. R.G. is a guy that hangs out on forums like DIY Stomp Boxes, et cetera, the same kind of places that I learned from when I was starting out. He’s the complete opposite of a troll. He prowls forums looking for people to help out, so he’s basically Batman. NBD.

R.G. works with Bob a lot on the designs and they make the GarageTone series. Spoiler: it's excellent. The sounds are great. The quality is great, but almost as soon as they hit the market, this pedal line disappears. Nobody was interested, which is a tragedy. I’ll go into why a little later on in the article, but first I want to go through this line of pedals one at a time and explain why the GarageTone series actually rocks out loud.

GarageTone Chainsaw Distortion

First up is the Chainsaw Distortion. Now, aesthetically, this pedal checks all the boxes, and I really like the color scheme, but let's talk about the circuit. This originally started as a different circuit. When Bob designed this, he was taking the Marshall Shred Master topology, which is also what he used inside the Jekyll and Hyde for the distortion. They had the product almost done. They're calling it the Chainsaw because it's a high gain distortion and chainsaws make you think of high gain distortion-- or at least they do for R.G. and Bob.

What follows is a scene straight out of The Godfather. Somebody slides a completely different pedal across the table to Bob-- the Box of Rock --he and R.G. confer (there may be cannolis involved; I can’t say for sure since I wasn’t there) and they decide to change it all at the last minute. R.G. and Bob take the Box of Rock, they remove one of the last stages, do a bunch of tweaks and put it in a new enclosure. Because of the rush, they didn't change the name, which results in this strange situation where a product is released called the Chainsaw Distortion -- but that doesn’t really describe the sound at all. It's actually a really beautiful basement, plexi-style overdrive circuit, and it plays like a fantastic light-to-medium gain overdrive.

Also, the Chainsaw Distortion was $49. Can we talk about how insanely cheap that is? This ain’t Behringer**, you guys. This is solid quality craftsmanship that also happens to be really inexpensive. You only have to pay $49 for a metal enclosure and a killer circuit.

**I’m not here to talk crap about Behringer, but I stand by this.

GarageTone Oil Can Phaser

Next up is the Oil Can Phaser. It was $59. And I do have the box. I say that because 1.) I’m always proud when I have the pedal as well as the original box it came in; it’s a collector thing, and 2.) This box is actually super cool. It opens vertically like a garage door. Get it? GarageTone? Garage door? Eh?

There's also a story with this pedal. Someone walked into Bob’s office when they were developing these and showed him an Electra Phase Shifter from the seventies, which was essentially a rebranded Electro-Harmonix Small Stone. It even said Electro-Harmonix on the circuit board. The older Small Stones have a very particular sound and different parts from the newer models, so it's a pretty special circuit. The engineers at Visual Sound took that and replicated it, and instead of the color switch, they installed knobs. So you have variable adjustment on the Oil Can Phaser, which is pretty awesome.

GarageTone Tremolo

Next up is the Tremolo, which is a really solid replication of an optical tremolo called the Demeter TRM-1 Tremulator. You probably already knew that Demeter was the Greek goddess of harvest, plants and soil-- that’s just common knowledge --but you may not know that she was also the Greek goddess who presided over the cycle of life and death, A.K.A., the Circle of Life.

Yeah. Rafiki did not invent the Circle of Life. Demeter did. #themoreyouknow #herstory

I also really want to throw in some sort of, “Demeter? I hardly know her!” joke here, but we have to get the actual pedal-related content at some point.

Unfortunately, I don't have a Demeter Tremulator, which hurts my heart because it's an amazing circuit. That said, the GarageTone Tremolo is a really solid send-up which features a compulator and a check altimeter, plus a wave selector from sign to square. Good depth. Good speed control. Frankly, it’s just a good pedal. Go try one out for yourself.

GarageTone Drivetrain Overdrive

Now, I don’t shock easily, but this next pedal in the GarageTone series legitimately shocked me when I found out the story behind it. I’m talking about the Garagetone Drivetrain, which is an overdrive with knobs for drive, treble, bass and volume. Now this one came in at $59, and it is a clone of the Reverend Drivetrain. I didn’t put two and two together on this deal, but long story short, the Garagetone Drivetrain is a clone of the Reverend Drivetrain.

But that’s not what’s crazy.

I used the Reverend Drivetrain-- which is a take on the Tube Screamer circuit --on my board around 2002. I had it on there for a year and really liked it. There was a guy named Joe Nailer at Reverend Musical Instruments, and he actually pulled in Bob Weil-- you remember, the guy who created the GarageTone series and started Visual Sound? --to design this for Reverend. Joe calls him up around the end of 1999 and says, “I want a Tube Screamer with the bass/treble control.” Basically, Bob hacks into the Tube Screamer side of a V1 Jekyll and Hyde overdrive/distortion, makes a ton of mods and creates the Reverend Drivetrain. About ten years later, he makes a less expensive clone of the Drivetrain for the GarageTone series, which is some Inception-level craziness: he’s making a clone of a pedal that he already made.

Which one’s the clone? Which one’s the original? I couldn’t tell you.

Long story short, if you like Tube Screamers, you're going to like the GarageTone Drivetrain a lot. Even if you don’t like Tube Screamers, you’ll probably still like the Drivetrain, because it solves the biggest issue with the Tubescreamer design: tone control. This pedal actually has tone control, so you can carve the bass and treble in and out of your mix. It’s a miracle.

GarageTone Axle Grease Delay

Last in the GarageTone series is the Axle Grease delay, coming in hot at $69.

I’ll be honest. The name doesn’t really make sense to me-- I’m not sure what “axle grease” is supposed to be referencing here. Personally, it makes me think of Axl from Guns N’ Roses, which is more of a rabbit trail than an outright reference. That said, it's a great pedal with knobs for delay, time, repeats and level. This is a PT2399-based delay, which is a chipset that was originally created for reverberation or echo in karaoke machines. Someone had the bright idea to make it a guitar effect, and the rest is history.

Nonsensical names aside, the Axle Grease has one of the most original 2399 sounds I've heard. So much that I actually didn't think it was 2399 when I first played it. When I talked to Bob Weil, he told me what circuit he had used, and I almost argued with him because it just has a different character. IMHO, the Axle Grease feels very, very much like a bucket brigade chip, but I’ll defer to Bob and R.G. on this since they actually invented the pedal.

Cheap ≠ Crap

Now that we’ve gone through the entire series, here's the question: what have we learned from the GarageTone mine of pedals that was released in 2010? Let’s break this down:

Just because something is cheap doesn't mean it doesn't sound good or that it's not good quality. Sometimes we equate expensive stuff with being better stuff, that's just not the case. Case in point: you can buy a plain white tee at Anthropologie for $100 or the same shirt at Walmart for $5. You may feel smarmier about your Anthropologie tee, but at the basic level they’re both made of the same materials. There’s no drastic difference between them, other than the price tag and the label. Some of the best pedals ever made were just really cheap pedals. Seriously. Some of my favorite pedals of all time also happen to be super affordable, so the first takeaway is that we shouldn't be so snobby about our gear.
We need to look at pedals differently. We can get really hung up on the aesthetics: the color, the pedal name, the design, the icon, the lack of an icon. The list goes on. Next time you’re looking for a good sound, something that’ll make your guitar sound great and inspire you to play, try diving into a bargain bin. Seriously. There's a lot of great, inspirational sounds in these cheaper pedals. It’s a cliche, but it’s also true: you can’t judge a book by its cover. The most beautiful guitar tone imaginable could be waiting for you in the crappiest enclosure you’ve ever seen. It’s happened before. If you're willing to put your fancy pants aside for a minute, you'll find some amazing sounds at a low price.

I want to close with a quote from Bob Weil, giving his statement on why he thinks the GarageTone series didn't work out:

“I would have not tried to make them cheap pedals. I would [not] have, honestly. It's the same advice that I've given to other would-be boutique builders or would-be pedal builders...You're going to get into the pedal business, [so] shoot high. There's too many others doing the mainstream and low market. Go into the higher market, higher price, emphasize the boutique origin of the pedals...Make the housing look special and go a little extra on the packaging, all that, because that's what we should have done [with the GarageTone series]. I should have taken my own advice that I've given to other people.”

Visual Sound changed its name to Truetone in 2015, so go over to www.truetone.com if you want to check out their current gear. There's also the True Tone Lounge series on YouTube, which is a really cool show-- probably better than The JHS Show if I’m being honest.