British music stomp-box manufacturer Effectrode makes gorgeous products for the performing musician. Stomp-boxes but designed using vacuum tubes and engineered for audiophile qualities.
From their about page:
About Effectrode Pedals
From the 1950′s up until the present day the world’s finest tube studio compressors, tube microphone preamps, tube tape delays and plate reverbs have stood the test of time to become highly desirable and sought after by musicians, sound engineers and enthusiasts of classic gear. Effectrodeis fueled by a sense of nostalgia and fascination with the warm, musical tone, clean lines and simplicity of such vintage vacuum tube equipment. I wanted to recreate this wonderful tone and classic styling in a stompbox format and began pursuing an alternative path to design effects pedals – pedals that might have been built if the transistor hadn’t been invented and tube technology had continued being refined and developed towards perfection.
My aim is that Effectrode pedals must push the limits and take guitar tone to the farthest possible point so that artists are inspired by them. All my effects pedals are unique, original and meticulously designed from the ground up, taking several years of research & development before they reach maturity. I utilise only the finest audiophile grade polyester capacitors, instrumentation grade resistors, NOS (new old stock) and modern triode tubes operating at proper amp plate voltages (300Volts!) with D.C. powered heaters. The signal path is all-tube, class-A circuitry – some designs are very linear and transparent whereas others are gorgeously non-linear and rich in harmonic overtones! These are effects pedals built from the “Right Stuff!”.
The result of all this meticulous attention to detail are beautiful pedals having more in common with high-end vintage studio equipment than the transistorised stompboxes normally found on the pedalboards of guitar players. For example, the Tube-Vibe is a rebuild of the classic Uni-Vibe effect made famous by Jimi Hendrix except it’s constructed with tubes instead of transistors. And the PC-2A compressor is built on an all-tube signal path and photo-optical gain attentuator just like the legendary LA-2A studio compressor. I will often work with professional musicians and guitar technicians during the design of a pedal and can even further fine-tune the circuitry to sculpt the sound for them.
One thing that they have done is maintain a small library of classic articles and reprints. We recently saw Forbidden Planet on tv and I was telling Lulu about Louis and Bebe Barron who did the soundtrack. Googled them and found several articles on the Barron's as well as other early electronic music composers on their site.
Check out Effectrode Articles - some fun reading.
