of the circuit I could give control back to the
player.
TRW: I love that it takes all of the pieces of
the Klon and makes each of them
tweakable.
PR: Yes, it’s the parallel pathways that gave
the original Klon the ability to add drive
while preserving transparency and clarity,
because it blended clean and dirty signals.
It’s an oddly specific, unconventional
overdrive design, but it works. With the
Merman, I wanted to let the player control
the balance of these signals. One interesting
note…every video we’ve seen comparing
the Merman with a Klon or Klone has
different settings on these signal levels, and
many are nowhere near Klon specs. This just
shows how different each player’s setup and
preferences really are.
TRW: I’ve been enjoying the Tractor Beam
lately. I’m impressed with the broad range of
tones I can get from one pedal—Phase 45,
Phase 90, faux Uni-Vibe, and even some
whacky pitch vibrato and comb filtering
effects. What’s going on inside that allows
so many vast sounds from one pedal?
PR: Phasers are less intuitive of an effect,
but their sonic range is amazing when you
add tweaks in the feedback, mix, number of
stages, voicing of these stages, etc. It’s
these aspects of the circuit that differentiate
between the Phase 90 and Phase 45, the
script and block Phase 90, and even the
unique sweep of the Uni-Vibe and its
Chorus/Vibrato switch. So I started with the
Phase 90 design, and just went full-tilt and
stuffed as many options as I could physically
fit inside the case, and also extended the
speed, range and width of the LFO sweep.
TRW: For a while, you had a line of Junior
pedals with less controls than the standard
six-control VFE pedal? What was the
inspiration behind the Junior line and why
was it phased out?
PR: I was looking to give players a lower cost
version of our products without
compromising on the build quality. These
designs had much of the same circuitry as
their big brothers, but in a simpler 3-knob
format. What we found is that our customers
were really into having lots of control, so
they opted to spend more money and get
the standard version. So we made our
product line a little simpler by just focusing
on what our customers wanted.
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