The Five: Creation Audio Labs’ Sarge
WTDP? met Gary ‘Sarge’ Gistinger at Summer NAMM in Nashville this past summer. Sarge and his company Creation Audio Labs was one of the ‘first adopters’ of our little site and was even kind enough to invite us to their party at the show… which was first class, by the way. The company was unveiling their Holy Fire overdrive at the show… and if you haven’t heard it, you need to check it out. We reconnected with Sarge and his crew recently and asked if he’d be up for a little round of Q&A. He was game. See how he reponded to The Five after the jump!
WTDP?: When and why did you start making effects pedals?
Sarge: Creation Audio Labs was formed in July of 2003 when myself, Alex “Skip” Welti, and “Dr.” Mike Claiborne all got walking papers (YOU’RE FIRED!) form Harman Pro North America when they shut down the Nashville operation and moved it back to Northridge, CA. As pro-audio repair experts we simply started doing the same thing we were doing at Harman for Soundcraft and BSS. We had a good idea that things were going to come to a close as far back as 2001 so we were preparing the whole time to start our own company. It was our intention to develop products once we got our business established and were up and running.
In July of 2005 Skip came up with an amazing circuit that very quickly became the REDEEMER. The Redeemer is an amazing circuit like no other… as the premium upgrade to any electric instrument, the cable quality, length, cost, capacitance, etc… debate is once and for all ended. With the Redeemer installed in an instrument you can use any length of cable, any quality of cable, and plug into pedals, amps or even directly into audio mixers and have amazing fidelity coming off of the instrument.
The Redeemer is still very much a “sleeper” product, but will soon shake up things. This new (and I stress the term NEW) technology has become the springboard for everything we design. Shortly following the Redeemer we came out with the MK.4.23 Clean Boost, the MW1 Studio Tool co-designed by Michael Wagener, and our latest little kid called the Holy Fire Overdrive/Distortion pedal.
WTDP?: At what point did you realize ‘Hey, I might be able to make a little money doing this.’?
Sarge: As for the idea of making money….that was the idea all along! So far though, we have been finding out just how hard that is!
WTDP?: Is there a stomp out there you wish you had made?
Sarge: Of course all pedal builders hold the Big Muff, TS-808, and the Ross compressor as the “I wish I’d thought of that!” pieces.
WTDP?: What’s on your workbench right now?
Sarge: We currently have several ideas in the works. Our next major thing will be the “end of the world” compressor pedal. We are also looking into analog summing buss units and mic-pre’s for studio use, bass guitar specific pedals and on-board circuits, and about a million other things. We have a habit of studying rich people and work very hard to follow in their steps. We are extremely blessed in that we have lots of ideas and a few skills to work toward them. We know a lot of people who fight very hard to come up with ideas to work on and we wish them all success. We just seem to have a knack for “thinking outside of the box” and most likely that has come form years of studying a bunch of old timers like Earl Nightingale, Norman Vincent Peale, Thomas Edison, and cats like that.
WTDP?: You’ve got free reign to assemble your dream trio. If you’re on guitar, who’s playing bass and drums (alive or dead)?
Sarge: Bass: Dennis Dunaway… Drums: Eric Singer
Thanks Sarge!
