things you don't see, like automatic
adjustment to the noise gates based off of
the gain control knob. Another is the Fuzz
control on the TightFuzz, which
automatically tweaks the bias too so you
can get awesome cleaner tones at the
bottom of the control, but not at the
sacrifice of the heavier fuzzy tones at the
top. Sometimes I’ll hide switches inside to
keep from scaring everybody off, and I’ll
preset them so it works well for most
people. I try to make my pedals work like
hammers or screwdrivers that are like
simple tools you can use to build your own
tone, not just for some endless search for
Jimi's, Joe’s, Stevie's, Eric's, David's,
Eddie's, or Robben’s tones. That way we
can all get back to making music.
TR: Those are the kinds of tone
philosophies I like to hear! How did you
go about developing your TightMetal
series of pedals?
JB: As you can expect, as lead engineer on
the original 5150 I got a LOT of requests
from players wanting something like it in a
pedal. One of the guys with this idea was
Mark Kloeppel from the death metal band
Misery Index. He wanted a simple pedal he
could take to fly-in gigs to get consistent
tone by plugging straight into the power
amp. Many metal bands play shows where a
bunch of bands fly in and play whatever
backline is on stage, so you can imagine
how tough that is. Mark explained to me
that on recordings, all the death metal guys
were either using the original 5150 or an
older Ampeg VH140C, and they all used
noise gates with the gate set very hard, to
help stop the notes down to dead silence. I
42
BUILDER PROFILE //
had a friend who owned one of the
Ampegs, so I borrowed it and set it up with
Mark’s favorite settings.
I was surprised how chunky it sounded,
with the notes stopping very tightly (which
is an important part of the death metal
tone), but equally interesting was the
frequency response curve of the EQ at the
settings Mark liked. I recognized the curve,
set up my 5150 block letter head to Eddie’s
settings from the time, and the two curves
matched! Obviously that EQ curve was a
good starting point to use for the basis of
the pedal, and should work for lots of
different modern metal and rock tones. I
spent a lot of time working with the gain
structure so the thickness/harmonic
distortion was in between the Ampeg’s
tight attack and the 5150’s buzzier, thicker
distortion. The Tight control further adjusts
this detail, so you can dial in the “chunk.”
I included a noise gate that stops the notes
really hard, and many say it’s one of the
best gates they've ever used for metal. And
I added a Thrash switch to help go from the
more modern tone of the 5150 to a heavier
scooped ‘80s metal tone.
The TightMetal has become our most popular
pedal ever. We’ve built several variations
since then, including the FatMetal which is
thicker and a little less chunky, sort of like
going from a 5150II back to a regular 5150.
Our newest in the TightMetal line is the
TightMetal Pro. The Pro has a ton of features,
and has taken over as our number one selling
pedal, and is especially popular for the fly-in
crowd since it has three-band EQ and
multiple boosts, and three effects loops.
Precision Tweaking: A Chat with James Brown of Amptweaker