TRENDING NOW!

The Guitar World guide to 21st-century gear trends

- BY GREGORY ADAMS

Pedals to the Metal

The '00s saw an explosion in the boutique-pedal market - but how long can it continue?

WHILE CRAFT PEDAL makers existed before the turn of the millennium — soldering circuit boards in their basement workshops, putting together one-of-one pieces for their friends — we've experienced a hell of a boutique pedal boom this past quarter century.

It's been a golden era of tone-chasers discovering small-batch stompboxes outside the norm, with humble-sized companies busting out massive sounds — whether remixing classic fuzzes or ringing up freaked-out modulations major manufacturers wouldn't dare deliver off the assembly line, en masse.

“Some smaller companies are willing to take bigger chances — fuzz pedals that have atypical controls, or total chaos machines,” says EarthQuaker Devices founder Jamie Stillman, somewhat summing up the specialized sonic ethos his business has harnessed since 2004. “A big company wouldn't tend to touch that, because it doesn’t reach a wider audience.”

Along with fellow boutique trailblazers at Keeley Electronics and Wampler, Stillman got his start as a hobbyist working from home - specifically while trying to fix a busted DOD 250 Overdrive. The Akron, Ohio, native started cruising online messageboards for schematics, which put him into contact with likeminded pedal enthusiasts around the world. Eventually, he started fooling around with his own designs. One early pedal was inspired by a Green Russian Big Muff circuit, which he'd dirtied-up with a hybrid Germanium/Silicon transistor. Black Keys guitarist Dan Auerbach slapped one onstage while Stillman was tour-managing the band, and word of mouth spread quickly. Stillman started spray-painting enclosures and hand-drilling product to sell on eBay. Eventually, this morphed into EarthQuaker's flagship pedal, the Hoof Hybrid Fuzz.