asking for a blend control so they could
maintain the low end of their normal dry
tone, so I developed our popular Dry/Low
knob that blends in the bottom part
without the highs, eliminating weird phase
shifting on the high end. We do some
custom mods too, like a Bass TightFuzz
with a switch to change it to a regular
guitar version. We’re still small enough to
offer that kind of specialized service, and I
usually only charge $50 for mods, or $30 if
you get them with the pedal direct from us
in the first place. I like doing mods
sometimes because some of our best future
features come as a result of these.
TR: Are there any nuggets of wisdom you
could share with us from your experiences
as a musician and a builder?
JB: Of course I learned a lot about
designing products and tweaking guitar
tones while at Peavey and Kustom, but over
the years the most important thing I
learned was that you can always learn more,
no matter how successful you are, you
never really “know it all.” Times change,
people change, their taste in music
changes, and you need to find ways to work
within those constantly changing
guidelines. As I’ve gotten older, I began
working with younger players who had
grown up playing differently than my
generation (like not using palm-muting as
much, for example) and I found they
needed something different. So I listened
more to people who liked amps I hated, to
try and find ways to incorporate the part
they liked while still leaving out things
about it that bugged me.
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BUILDER PROFILE //
It turns out that everything has trade-offs,
and people learn to live with the bad part
to get the good, like using single coils on a
Strat and putting up with the hum, or
touring with your favorite tube amp even
though it breaks down occasionally.
Learning how to appreciate the bright side
of imperfect instruments, amps, and effects
and find ways to incorporate that while
designing out their down-sides has become
even more important at Amptweaker, and
I’ve used that thought process as part of
our design philosophy ever since.
TR: What are your plans for the future?
JB: Right now we’re swamped with pedals
to build and are up to 14 different models,
but I do get a LOT of questions about when
we’ll be doing an amp. It’s definitely
something I’ve been working towards, and
a lot of the pedal research we’ve done is
also helping me come up with amp ideas to
implement once we get to that part. The
market has down-sized dramatically in ampland, with everybody and their brother
coming out with smaller and smaller amps.
As for new pedal ideas, we’re working on
several new requested pedals, with some
planned launches at January NAMM,
including getting some smaller footprint
pedals up and running. We’ve also been
spending a lot of efforts toward
streamlining our production so we can get
more out quicker, and trying to stay ahead
of this wave!
TR: Thanks again for your time James!
JB: Thanks a lot!
Precision Tweaking: A Chat with James Brown of Amptweaker