ProTone Pedals sent through an update regarding its new collaboration with guitarist Jason Becker and the creation of the Perpetual Burn stomp. The dual channel, all analog design will emulate the gear that Jason used during the recording of the Perpetual Burn album while adding flexibility and tone sculpting options. Channel 1 will consist of a modified version of the distortion pedal favored by Jason at the time. Channel 2 will house an analog emulation of the two amplifiers Jason preferred to use melded into one circuit.

ProTone has also set up a blog so fans can track the pedal project. Check the ProTone website for details on that. The pedal is expected to bow in early September and carry a price tag of $289.

The GearTrap.com crew may have just reserved themselves some fresh ink in the next edition of the Guinness Book of World Records by assembling a fully-functioning, 142-stomp pedalboard. The massive undertaking was part of the group’s Summer NAMM party in Nashville last week. The board – the brainchild of GearTrap’s Jaux King and Aljon Go – sported a surface area of about 45 square feet. Due to venue space restraints, it was formed in an oval, however if it had been laid out in a straight line it would have had been almost 36 feet long and a foot and a half deep.

The WTDP? crew spent our NAMM show Saturday night north of town at the friendly confines of WireWorld – the studio of rock producer extraordinaire Michael Wagener. Who is that you might ask? If you were/are a fan of 1980s metal, you are familiar with his work. He produced Skid Row’s Slave To The Grind, Motley Crue’s Too Fast For Love and oh… Master of Puppets by Metallica, among many others. More recently, his credits can be found on the back of the latest two releases from Texas rock trio King’s X (Ogre Tones, XV). If you’re a gearhead with web access, you probably also know Michael from his involvement with musician’s forum gearslutz.com.

Winding through the endless aisles of gear at the Summer NAMM show, the WTDP? crew was greeted by a couple of truly unique offerings we thought were worth sharing. These products aren’t our usual suspects for coverage, but we were attracted by the novelty… and, in some cases, performance! Some ideas seemed silly… others seemed bizarre… and a few were startling at first, but really proved out to be pretty damn cool. Finally, some were just nuts… real nuts. A group of ladies set up in the corner of the hall were selling nuts. They offered free samples, too!

Las Vegas five-piece The Cab is getting lots of good buzz lately due in large part to their CD, Whisper War, released in late April on Decaydance/Fueled By Ramen. If you recognize those two indie labels, it might be because bands like Fall Out Boy, Panic at the Disco and Gym Class Heroes also call them home. Earlier this year, The Cab guitarist Ian Crawford turned to longtime friend Matt Johnson of Washington-based Tortuga Effects to custom build an all new pedal board – having already been a fan of Tortuga’s Sasquatch fuzz and the new octave/fuzz combo stomp – the Hazy Fuzz Experience.

Arizona-based HomeBrew Electronics is preparing to launch a new transparent boost and overdrive stomp dubbed the Paradrive. The company came clean after fans caught glimpse of the new pedal on the manufacturer’s website and flooded the company with questions about it. According to HBE, the pedal will feature a diode selector, which will have a major impact on the overall sound of the unit. The boost function pushes the signal approximately 8dB to 10dB. The stomp also features gain, level, and tone knobs. The new pedal can be pre-ordered right now from the HBE website. 

The crew over at Barge Concepts has launched a new stomp in their VFB family of blend and bypass devices. The DVB-2 is a fully buffered true bypass loop with two foot-switchable clean blend controls. The DVB-2 uses audio grade Burr Brown op-amps to buffer the send and receive signals, allowing improved signal strength over long pedal chains and cable runs, and minimizing ‘tone sucking’ from vintage and mass-produced effects. The two clean blend controls mix the clean/direct signal with the output of the effects loop, while the Blend A/B switch selects between two clean blend settings.

ProTone Pedals has teamed up with guitarist Jason Becker on a pedal designed to capture the incendiary tones from his 1988 album, an instrumental tour de force called Perpetual Burn. For those not familiar with Becker’s story, it is truly an amazing and bittersweet tale.

In 1990, as an up and coming axe slinger, Becker was tapped to play on David Lee Roth’s A Little Ain’t Enough CD. It was during those sessions, he was diagnosed with Lou Gehrig’s Disease (ALS).

A lot of hype surrounded the launch of the Moog Guitar – a fully-analog and very unique instrument designed to give players more control over directing energy to, or taking it from, the actual strings. While not our normal cup of tea, we did want to give it a mention here because it really is a very cool new way of approaching the guitar.

Moog Guitar inventor Paul Vo was on hand to share some of the instrument’s capabilities. Sustain for days… and we mean DAYS! Plus the reverse… an attack system that kills string energy giving the instrument a muted tone similar to a Japanese Koto or good ol’ American banjo.

The Summer NAMM show is much, much more than just a guitar event. Nearly every instrument imaginable is represented on the exhibit floor – from bass banjos to french horns, violins to crystal flutes. The show is both a place for buyers to get the drop on new offerings coming from their favorite manufacturers and a place for education on how to survive in the music biz.

The volume of activity on the show floor often results in treasure hunt-style journey into the various booths searching for elusive pedal scoops. The WTDP? crew combed the carpet to come up with little stomp tidbits… and here is what we found!

The entrepeneureal spirit is alive and well at Summer NAMM this year with one of the more interesting offerings is being touted by V&R Remote with its upstart Pedelflex tethered stomp knob ‘remote’. Concept owner Simon Ebrey calls the Pedalflex this missing link in stompbox control.

The unit consists of a cable and clip system that attaches at one end to your desired pedal knob via a universal joint and the other to your mic stand. A dial at the mic stand in allows the user to rotate the knob on the stomp without bending over.

The US arm of AMT Electronics gave the WTDP? a sneak peak at a pair of new stomps in the Russian company’s Legend Amps Series – the P1 and BG Sharp. The P1 is designed as a clone of a 5150 head – the popular signature amp of rock guitar god Eddie Van Halen. It sports a three-band equalizer as well as gain and level knobs.

The BG Sharp is designed to emulate the ‘Sharp’ channel of a Bogner amplifier and has the same five-knob configuration as the P1 stomp. AMT reps told WTDP? that a third pedal in the series is also on the way, but were mum on the specifics of the stomp.

The wah wizards at Morley are planning to offer a second signature wah pedal from former Dokken and Lynch Mob lead guitarist George Lynch. Following the success of the first issue – Lynch’s Dragon Wah – the company is moving ahead with a new Lynch-inspired wah for release later this year.

The Dragon Wah – a limited release that Morley sold through rather quickly – was an electro-optical, switchless Wah with two wah modes – Wah and Wow. The Wah mode is a standard Wah tone with a bit of gain. The Wow mode is more vocal and pronounced for more over the top Wah tones. The pedal’s level knob adds up to 15dB boost in either mode.

The pedal pros at DigiTech demoed its new line of professional effects pedals – dubbed Hardwire Extreme Performance Pedals – for the WTDP? crew at Summer NAMM in Nashville. The seven-pedal set, originally shown at Winter NAMM in California, is now shipping to stores and in addition to sounding fantastic include a couple of innovative extras that should serve as a notice to guitarists around the world that DigiTech is paying attention.

The line consists of the RV-7 Stereo Reverb, CR-7 Stereo Chorus, CM-2 Tube Overdrive, SC-2 Valve Distortion, TL-2 Metal Distortion, DL-8 Delay/Looper and HT-2 Chromatic Tuner.

It was a pleasure for the WTDP? crew a couple of weeks back to have an afternoon conversation with former Galactic Cowboys guitarist Wally Farkas. Wally, knee deep into recording his first solo record, took time out to talk with us about a bit of his past – mainly all of the cool gear he used to make-up his signature tone on the last four Galactic Cowboys releases as well as many of the other projects he has been involved in since.

In this two-part series, Wally will first walk us through the hand-made pedal board that he used on the road during the Metal Blade years with the Cowboys. Later, he will let us in on his amp and guitar collection and drop a few hints about his upcoming solo record ‘Past Due’… slated for release this fall on Molken Music. Now, over to Wally…