

Ideas I Have For Pedals - tl
http://zedshaw.com/blog/2009-03-05.html

======
chett
I was thinking of programmable pedals recently, Found these: Line 6 DSP dev
kit <http://line6.com/tcddk/index.html>. Or open source Open Stomp
<http://www.howleraudio.com/index.html>. Has anyone tried these?

------
biohacker42
The branding for music products is embarrassing. But I strongly suspect that
is because most of the consumer are in fact in their early teens.

~~~
antiform
Somehow, I don't think that most of the consumers of music products are in
their early teens. Electric guitars, amps, and guitar pedals are expensive,
and I doubt most teens have that kind of disposable income. I went to high
school in a pretty affluent suburb, and even kids playing in bands there
rarely had anything but entry-level guitars and a couple of cheap $40 pedals.

From my limited experience (working in a record store, giving guitar lessons,
touring with a band), the biggest purchasers of these items seem to be men in
their 20s and middle-age married men with kids trying to recapture some of
their youth or introduce their children to music they love.

That said, I'd like to see where Zed buys his pedals (guitar center?), because
most of pedals that I've seen have pretty tame names, like the popular Korg
series of effects pedals, or technical names, like Behringer CL9 or Boss AD3.
The only one that I use that come close to what he describes have been ones
from Death by Audio, and they're so great that I don't mind the funny names.

------
tricky
How about Jesusonic? <http://www.jesusonic.com/> I haven't tried it because my
tone goes to crap every time I throw something digital in my signal path.

Build a programmable analog device and I'll come running with an open wallet.

~~~
gamache
Not a pedal, but do you know the TriAxis?
[http://www.mesaboogie.com/Product_Info/Rackmount-
Preamps/Tri...](http://www.mesaboogie.com/Product_Info/Rackmount-
Preamps/TriAxis/triaxis.html)

------
tricky
who wants to partner up and build an iPhone app that does this?

[edit] - I was half kidding before, but I looked into it and well, I think it
is a great idea. no?

~~~
jws
It is more complicated, you will need a hardware connection which I think is a
different licensing world. Perhaps you can pull it off through the headphone
port without extra licensing since both audio in and out are there and a
switch.

Beyond that, I think it's a great idea. For anything other than a single
function pedal, the user interface becomes a tedious nightmare. With an iPhone
you have room and flexibility to make a nice user interface.

Plenty of horsepower in the phone, but you'd probably run the battery down in
a few hours at full processing, so you'd have to plan on power.

I would envision the iPhone up on a stand or amp where you can see it and a
floor box with the audio interface and a stomp button (in place of the
headphone clicker button).

~~~
tricky
I like the idea of a stand-alone stomp box i/o port. This might make an
interesting practice amp, too. Much like the Line-6 GuitarPort. I think the
idea would be get the software started then license it to a Line6 or M-Audio.

I wonder what the iPhone's mic preamp sounds like.

------
robotron
You might also want to think about musicians who use pedals as their
instruments (I am one).

~~~
lliiffee
Pedals exclusively? Interesting! Do you have anything you can point to? Do you
mean pedals + vocals like Reggie Watts?

~~~
robotron
I don't want to pimp my own stuff here but search Google, Youtube or Vimeo for
pedal feedback loops or pedal noise. It's usually abstract drone or noise so
not to a lot of people's tastes. There are a few businesses that have sprung
up from making or selling products to these artists though.

------
mrfish
I want to make a web framework that I can control through pedals!

~~~
jerf
Well, you wouldn't want an analog guitar effect pedal, but it's easy to get
MIDI pedals. I don't know what you'd do with the MIDI, but the sky's the
limit.

