NAMM: Call out the Spinstigator…
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NAMM is sprinkled with interesting inventor/entrepeneur-types looking for a market for their musical whiz-bangs. I’ll admit, this one threw me for a bit, but in the end, it is a pretty damn cool gizmo. It’s called the Spinstigator – an untangleable guitar cable. The secret is a noiseless, rotating connector built into the cable that turns when you turn, and sounds no different than a regular high-quality guitar cord. Suspicious? You bet I was, but to my delight the Spinstigator worked like a champ… and as promised, with no noticeable loss of signal. You can check out the Spinstigator in action after the jump!
This is good to see. Fran shuttered her pedal shop in April due to many factors, including the crap economy, but word surfaces this week via MySpace that she is back in business! In her own words… “It has been a very strange year for me, but the good news for those who continue to support what I do is that due to increased demand for my custom work I have decided to keep Frantone going as a custom only company. Basically everything is made to order. There will be some basic inventory as I have time to put some items on the shelf for sale but anything can be made any way you want it.” She also has a new stomp – the Cream Puff Plus – pictured on her site!
The What’s That Dude Play? crew will be in attendance at the first Nashville Amp Expo slated for 22-23 August. The event is being put on by Creation Audio Labs and has attracted quite a guest list including Vox, Marshall and Korg mixed in with smaller independent builders like Reeves, Sommatone, Xits Sound, Trillium and Reason among many, many more. Well over 50 exhibitors have signed on and more are pending. All signs point to a great show! For more information on the show and a full list of exhibitors – including a handful of pedal guys – check out the official show website at 
UK pedal gurus D*A*M has teamed up with Colorsound to create a reissue of the Professional MKII Tone Bender. The first 100 units will have Mullard OC84’s along with Mullard and Iskra capacitors. According to D*A*M’s David Wain, the build style is as you’d find in an original 1960’s Sola Sound MKII. He plans on building around 10 pedals ever couple of weeks adding that he wants to get it right and not rush the job. David stressed that this is not a D*A*M pedal, it is a Colorsound reissue. The pedal will be available through Macari’s in London. Firm pricing is expected to be set soon, but estimates are that the pedal will run around US$490.
Canada’s Solidgold Soundlabs is a bit of an unknown in the boutique pedal market. You don’t see a lot of chatter about them in the forums or see too much second hand sales of their product, so when Greg and I struck up a conversation regarding the redesign of his pedal line, I asked him to send me a pair of pedals to review. The first of the two I dove into was the Agent 13 fuzz – an off-shoot of the company’s Formula 69 fuzz box. Whereas the 69 is designed for warm, smooth fuzz tones, the 13 aims to more beastly with thick high gain fuzz and even some broken robot glitch qualities on tap. So how does the Agent 13 stack up again the flood of boutique fuzzes?
Hey gang. Sorry for the lack of updates over the past few days. I’ve been pulling triple duty on the West Coast covering the San Diego Comic Con for friends of WTDP? – ComingSoon.net. I have a few things in the kitty for when I return to Texas, including a few stragglers from Summer NAMM and new Your Mileage May Vary reviews of SolidGoldFX’s Agent 13 fuzz and Lizard Leg Effects’ Flying Dragon. We also have a road trip planned next month to the Seattle area and hope to hook up with some pedal builders and artist from the area while there. Hang in there!
Ok, ok… we’ve succumbed and joined the Twitter craze. Hey, all the kids are doing it, right? You can now follow the exploits of What’s That Dude Play? on Twitter via our user name @wtdpblake. We’ll update through Twitter when all the cool stuff hits the website – appearances, YMMV reviews, interviews and pro pedalboard goodness. And while we’re on the subject of social networking, did you know that What’s That Dude Play? is on MySpace and Facebook too? You know it! Seek us out… you won’t be sorry. Again… we’re now on Twitter! Follow us at @wtdpblake.
Back home from the NAMM convention, I’m going through my camera and digging out some shots from the show for a few extra galleries. This one is pedal-centric. I may have enough unseen general show snaps to do another random shot thread later. We’ll see. Most of these pedals are not new per se, but some still have yet to see wide release. Points of interest? The Belcat stomps got new paint jobs. The new T-Rex versions of the previously released Tim Jauernig pedals. What the heck is a 5 O’clock Charlie? And whoa! The price on that hand-wired Tubescreamer throws me EVERY TIME! I’ve got a few more NAMM-ish posts to make. Until then, enjoy the pics!
And the hits keep coming from Electro-Harmonix. This time around it’s the 22 Caliber Power Amp. The pedal is basically a 22-watt amp in a Nano-sized pedal enclosure – a shrunken head, if you will. The beauty of the 22 is that it can push any cab and any speakers – 4 ohms, 8 ohms, 16 ohms – it doesn’t matter. Crank the volume knob on the 22 Caliber and send the pedal/amp into overdrive. Larry gave us a quick demo using his trusty G&L Legacy into the 22 Caliber and straight into a 2 x 12 cabinet. Check out the clip… and listen for when he cranks it to add distortion. 
By now a lot of folks know that many big names in the musical equipment manufacturing game gave Summer NAMM a pass this year – no Fender, Gibson, Dunlop, etc… This random shot update is a tribute to those companies that did make the trip to Nashville to show off their wares. Several other companies (missing from this collage) attended as well with the biggest being Yamaha, Ibanez, Martin, Ernie Ball, etc… I’m hopeful that a rejuvenated economy will bring vendors back to Nashville in 2010. We didn’t run into Bert and Ernie today, but hey we did say ‘Hello’ to the man that sold Hendrix one of his first fuzz pedals. I’ll take that trade. Take a peek!
Another Electro-Harmonix pedal that perked up a few ears when it was announced was the Memory Toy analog delay/chorus. This sub-$100 stomp sports Delay, Blend and Feedback knob controls and a Modulation mini-toggle that switches on a chorus effect, all in EHX’s Nano stomp enclosure. Using the same guitar/amp from previous clips, Larry gave us a brief tour of the pedal and played us a short clip to share with you. Whether the Memory Toy will be a Carbon Copy killer remains to be seen, but it sounds like it is aiming for a piece of that market. Take a listen and judge for yourself.
Back in the EHX private sound room at Summer NAMM, Larry showed off one of Electro-Harmonix most highly-anticipated new stomps – the Memory Boy analog delay. Featuring switchable dual-wave forms, expression pedal input and chorus/vibrato settings, the 550ms delay Memory Boy is sure to please analog delay ethusiasts across the globe. Knob controls include Delay, Depth, Blend and Feedback and enable to user to fine tune the echo options to suit. Listen to the clip below. Again using the G&L Legacy into the Traynor Custom Valve 50, Larry runs through several of the pedals nuances, including the chorus and vibrato options.
Included in the boat-load of new pedals Electro-Harmonix brought to the Summer NAMM show this week was the Cathedral stereo reverb unit. Like many EHX pedals, the Cathedral performs feats that go well behind a tradition reverb stomp, including a flange/reverb hybrid (called Flerb) and echo settings. We had a chance to talk with Larry at EHX and have him run us through most of the new pedal’s settings. Using a G&L Legacy into a Traynor Custom Valve 50, the clip below showcases the Cathedral’s room, spring and plate settings as well as its reverse reverb and Flerb offerings. Listen up!
Ben with Red Witch was kind enough to give the WTDP? crew a demo of his new Titan triple delay pedal we showed you yesterday. The pedal houses three idenitical delay circuits all sporting the same controls – Delay Time, Wet/Dry Mix and Feedback. You can run the pedal in series or in parallel via a mini-toggle switch. The pedal also has a feedback loop to enable the player to tie in other modulation pedals or the like. The clip below showcases the pedal’s classic analog sound, slapback and parallel running of the three delays. Towards the end, modulation is added. Ben says the pedal will be released in about nine weeks and carries a MAP of $399. Check it out!