[WM] I’m a bit of a pedal collector, and of the
hundreds of pedals I own, very few of them
have branding on the side of the pedal that
faces the player. You could have had the
JHS logo facing the audience ala Vox and
Cry Baby wahs, but instead the logo is
facing the player. Why did you do that?
[Josh] I have never thought about it.
There is no reasoning there. That’s
funny, I’m thinking about that now.
There’s no JHS on the top, I’m
looking at all the pedals on the
walls. Everybody usually has
their name at least on the
top. I don’t know – I like
it though. I think for me it
was always that the pedal had
to look really clean, the icon needed to
be iconic, literally. I didn’t want anything else
Boss / JHS Pedals Angry Driver
distracting from a simple icon. I’ve never even
put that a pedal is an overdrive, I just give it a
it, loves it, takes it out of the store and goes
and plays some gigs. He kept finding himself
not using the dirt channel of the Mesa, which
is shocking. Then he kept on not using the
dirt channel on the Mesa. Then he would go
play a Backline gig and they would give him a
Twin reverb and he’d use it and it’d sound the
same. He just fell in love with it, quit using amp
distortion, and that’s all he used.
I met him at NAMM 2015 or 2016. I was kind
of familiar with his music, but I didn’t know all
of his work really until I worked with him. So I
walked up and was like, “You’re the reason that
pedal started selling!” And you know, we just
had a conversation, he had a few thoughts, and
so I just tweaked it and was like, “Here you go,
that’s a signature pedal.” It’s been super fun.
We did the version 1, and then version 2. A
lot of people don’t realize that with version
2, we took Andy’s actual vintage TS 808 and
we integrated that in as a boost, preset how
he would set it and tape the knobs. So that’s
what’s in that pedal, you get the two circuits. It’s
been a blast to work with him.
name and make you try to figure out what it is
and tie that to the feeling and the sound of the
JHS Pedals Andy Timmons Signature "@" Pedal
pedal. I don’t know, it’s kind of odd.
to handwrite on it because I have horrible
I’ve had people ask why I don’t say like, “Pulp handwriting, I had to do something clean. I was
‘N’ Peel Compressor”, but I don’t put that on in a craft store with my wife and we passed the
there. I just let people pick up a pedal and just isle where the rubber stamps for teachers were,
believe that people are smart, and they see a and it was like a light bulb went off. From that
knob that says ‘compression’ or a knob that point on, with very early ones, I started using
says ‘drive’. Some of that is just how I wanted stamps straight off the craft store shelf. Then
it to look and I didn’t really think much about it. I had a guy make me custom rubber stamps.
Maybe that’s bad, maybe that’s good. That’s where that came from.
[WM] I love icons, and as I was scrolling your A really good visual example of this is a
web site, the background image reminded me
that to my knowledge, you’re the only pedal
manufacturer with an icon for every pedal. I
have to ask if any of that inspiration (and it is
inspired) came from the EHX Big Muff Pi?
[Josh] No, it did not, that’s cool though, but
not at all. That came from when I first started
building over a decade ago. It wasn’t so easy
to start a pedal company, you can do it easily
now. I didn’t have a way to print pedals, and
it wasn’t so obvious how to print your logos.
I didn’t want to do a sticker, I didn’t want
Electro-Harmonix Big Muff
May 2019
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