New direction...

So, in the aftermath of the Rat debacle I returned to some previous project ideas, and I'm pleased to report that one of them has come to fruition.  I had been working for a while on trying to make a simple, one-knob overdrive that captured the warm sun-drenched sound of an over-driven tweed amp.  

If you've ever played through a tweed amp cranked up into the 10/11 volume range you know what I'm talking about.  

There were three things I was trying to achieve:

1) simplicity - the '57 Champ only needed one knob, and so 
                      do you.

2) dynamic range - the clear draw of the old low-watt 
                             Fenders is that you can play the 
                             distortion with your fingers.  They're 
                             some of the most dynamically responsive 
                             amps ever, and that's what this pedal 
                             was aiming to achieve.

3) raw power - The thing I love about my tweed Princeton is 
                       that it is neither pristine or high-fi.  It brings 
                       a nice tight bottom end, a full middle and 
                       ringing highs, but it does it all with 
                       bare-knuckle abandon.  It is the kind of 
                       power you can feel in your finger tips, that 
                       makes you want to play more - to play 
                       better.

After some serious experimentation, and some careful dialing in, I present to you "The Wayfarer"

The Wayfarer is a transistor based OD with a selectable boost for high gain / low gain application.   The magic of this pedal is in the diodes.  I chose to go with Germanium diodes because they gave the pedal a nice warm breakup that sounded and felt like my Princeton.  Cleaner when picked lightly, but edgy and dirty when you dig in.  I'm not claiming any sort of special mojo here, but they do give this pedal a distinctive sound.



This is the artwork for the pedal, and as you can see it's a one-knob, one-toggle affair.  The pedal is ready for production, and I'll be making these throughout April.  I'll record some clips and begin pre-orders next week. 

The initial sale price is going to be $120 shipped ConUS.