What Is A Land Device? — The JHS Show

In this article, I want to talk about a brand that is a mystery in the pedal market. And I’m not talking about a Scooby Doo mystery here. I’m talking about a Hercule Peroit-worthy riddle that has baffled the experts. And by “the experts,” I mean “me.”

Land Devices is a new-ish pedal company that came onto the scene in the last few years, and they are cloaked in riddles and deep, deep mystery. It's a little bit maddening because they won't do any public interviews. Nobody knows where they're from. We don't even know if it's a group of people, some weird syndicate, a couple of people, or just one person. For reference, let me quote the “About” page on their website:

Land Devices is a small operation run by Land in Oakland, CA. All products are designed, assembled, and tested in our studio.

That’s it. That’s all the information they offer. No names. No start date. No founder. Nothing. For comparison, the JHS “About” page offers detailed biographies for each of our employees, right down to whether they prefer Parks and Rec or The Office. Now, the mystery of Land Devices has driven me crazy for long enough, so I got to work, and I’m proud to say that with a little bit of bribery, some dark web hacking, and light to medium blackmail (in the same vein as the “light treason” that George Sr. engages in on Arrested Development), I was able to get an official statement from Land Devices. I risked my life for this, and I hope you appreciate it:

“I believe it was mid-2017. I was just getting into pedals, and I couldn't afford anything, particularly vintage circuits, so I started building them...That's how I started. I just designed a pedal...with my favorite [circuit], which was the [Interfax Harmonic] Percolator. I threw it on Reverb, and then Jim from Reverb messaged me and said, ‘Well, I had to buy this.’ Then he said, ‘We're going to do a rollout with Andy...We're just going to do a run.’ And I was like, ‘I'm not even a real company.’ Right after the Andy demo launched, Premier Guitar emailed me the next day and then it just [snowballed]. I was like, ‘Oh, I’ll make another twenty [pedals],’ and then it would sell out immediately, so I’d...make another twenty [pedals], and then I was like, ‘Okay, is this going to be a thing?’ I figured, you know, worst case scenario [if I start making more pedals and no one buys them], I’m out like $500 bucks?”

Honestly, this interview created more questions than it answered, but I’m still grateful that we got to talk to this person at all.

Now, let’s talk about these individual pedals in a little more detail.

HP-2 Distortion

The first Land Devices pedal that I ever saw was their first release: the HP-2 Distortion. And as soon as I saw it, I bought it. It's beautiful. I was inspired. The choices of knobs, the colors, the graphics, the simplicity added up to one of the most perfectly put together pedals, aesthetically, that I'd ever seen. To quote the pedal maker him/herself:

“I really like utilitarian stuff, like all that Braun stuff back in the day from Dieter Roth. I really liked the utilitarian aesthetic of military stuff, so I combined them. But I also really like fun-looking things that are not super serious, so it’s some sort of weird [mix]...I’m a big fan of olive drab.”

I have the green version of the HP-2 Distortion, which is a beautiful olive drab, one of the finest colors in the color spectrum. I also have a nice white version, which I’m pretty sure was a limited edition. Now, you could give me pretty much any pedal on earth, and I could find something special in it to geek out about, but the HP-2 is truly an exceptional piece of gear. It is a very, very unique circuit that is based around one of the rarest pedals on the face of the Earth: the Interfax Harmonic Percolator HP-1. This is famed producer Steve Albini’s favorite distortion box. They're incredibly hard to find, so Land Devices put the HP-2 together as a modern reproduction.

Honestly, it's a home run. Just check it out.

EP-5 Preamp

The second pedal that Land Devices put out was the EP-5 Preamp. It's a very, very useful pedal and it is a “more good” type circuit, meaning it's the kind of thing that I would turn on and leave on all the time. You can use it as a preamp boost, engaging it in front of drives and fuzzes, or set it up to hit your tube vamp and create saturation. The circuit inside emulates the Echoplex preamp, hence the name EP-5. The EP-5 is much smaller than the vintage pedal, which is honestly for the best. Look up a photo of an Echoplex. It’s definitely bigger than a bread box.

Land Devices did a great job with the EP-5, but this one is also a bit of a mystery because it it’s weird release timeline. Basically, Land Devices didn't make this pedal for very long, and then they discontinued it almost (but not quite) immediately after its release. There's a lot of rumors about why this happened, mostly involving unobtainium type parts and space technology. Basically, I don’t know why they discontinued the EP-5.

Luckily, this story still has a happy ending. Land Devices did recently re-release the EP-5 as a smaller pedal called the PRE. This reissued pedal doesn’t have a footswitch, which is basically Land Devices telling us that we can't turn it off. And you know what? I'm okay with that.

Land Devices/Farm Pedals No Masters Fuzz

The third pedal that Land Devices put out is probably the most rare: the Land Devices/Farm Pedals No Masters Fuzz. I had a hard time finding this. I want to be honest: in my research, digging, diving, scrounging, digging through bargain bins at Guitar Center, one just showed up. Literally, somebody mailed me this pedal. No explanation. No return address. Mildly creepy.

Now, even apart from that mystery, there's something interesting about this specific pedal that I have: it has a very small hole here on the side and there's no explanation to why that hole exists. I can't find it in any photography anywhere.

Should I be concerned about what's in this pedal, about whether it’s actually the pedal I was searching for or it's a disguised device with some sort of peephole camera that's always watching me? Is this pedal some sort of cursed artifact that will always show back up in my office no matter how many times I throw it away/run it over with my car/chuck it into an incinerator?

Nah. I’m probably fine.

The Land Devices/Farm Pedals No Masters Fuzz is based off of the Selmer Buzz Tone from the 1960s. Selmer was a music shop on Charing Cross Road in London. It was next to Macari’s, Orange, Jennings, and Vox. It’s a really cool spot. It pains me to admit that I don’t own the Selmer Buzz Tone. It's one of the only vintage fuzz pedals I've never been able to find, and it’s allegedly the same circuit that Syd Barrett used on the original Pink Floyd records.

Coincidentally, you should check out Farm Pedals. They have some really cool stuff.

Land Mixer

The next release from Land Devices is not a pedal. It is a portable utility device called the Land Mixer, and it's beautiful. Just look up a photo if you don’t believe me. There’s tons of colored knobs and switches. It is essentially a very, very useful portable high quality mixer that you can use for all kinds of applications. You can plug microphones, guitars, whatever you want and mix them into one or two channels. You can do a lot of things with this, but my personal favorite is using these three output jacks to connect one guitar with three different pedals. This allows me to experiment with different levels, different effects, but since it’s all being shuttled through the one mixer device, I have much more control over the whole process.

It’s super fun, and I think a lot of you might want to play with this mixer and discover the different variations for yourself.

Domino Analog Octave

The newest release from Land Devices is the Domino Analog Octave. Now, I've played this before on the JHS Show, but I want to talk about a feature that’s not so obvious to the casual observer: there are eight dots on this pedal, which lines up with a certain conspiracy believed about the Land Devices crew. What does this represent? We see the letter L-A-N-D on the one side of the pedal, and on the other side, we see nothing in those dots.

So, the rumor is that Land Devices is an organization of secretive builders. They want the team to have eight people, but currently they’ve only got four builders. They're looking to fill the other four spots sometime in the future. I've heard this on various dark web forums and, more recently, at the local laundromat. It was very awkward. I don't know if it's true, but I want to believe it. And because I want to believe it, I think it's true.

The Domino is based around the Dan Armstrong Green Ringer. The Green Ringer has already been on an episode called “Do They Need Knobs?” where I promised I would never put knobs on this ‘cause it doesn't need it. And I stand by that.

Basically, this entire article and the JHS Show episode were my version of the bat signal. I just wanted to get a message out to Land Devices. I want them/her/him to know--whoever you are, whatever you are, and wherever you're actually located--that I'm really thankful for your pedals. The aesthetic choices are absolutely stunning. Your circuits are spectacular. Your build quality is through the roof. And I just need you to know that if you ever choose to reveal yourself to the public, I'll keep it a secret in my heart, because I'm your biggest fan.