The Thing Itself
One thing I always try and do at Rainger FX is to make everything about our pedals be relevant to what they are, and what they do. This can be everything from the name, the shape, the graphics, the type of fixtures used; I want to make them, as much as possible, be The Thing Itself.
I don’t like when a guitar pedal - however great the sound - is stuck in some standard enclosure, and some nice-looking image is screen printed onto it. I don’t like that disconnect - I want the whole thing focussed and in harmony with what it is and does
Of course we don’t always achieve this, but this is the aim.
Our Air Traffic Controller pedal (sadly discontinued) was a good example. Every other pedal - including several of ours - was trying to be the biggest, loudest, most extreme possible. I thought, why not do the opposite? Why not make a pedal that…. Whispers? A whisper can be dramatic, soothing, terrifying….
It could sound like air wooshing around, hence the name.
So how do you make a whisper? It’s shaped white noise hiss, isn’t it? So the circuit was made to produce the hiss according to the note envelope, and then to have a strong low-pass filter on it - working the cut-off in a similar way…. It needed some binding together into one sound, so an overdrive section for the actual guitar sound was also added.
For the enclosure I designed my first asymmetric box - a non-parallel sided thing, designed to be reminiscent of the odd-shaped windows of a commercial airliner cockpit. With the crowning achievement of a glorious signal-present LED display where the orange LEDs marched down either side of a runway that stretched into the distance, and graphic art from Rich DiMaio, the whole thing was as much like using a flight simulation device - for practicing landing - as possible. I swear you could improve your flying skills by using it!
The Chop Fuzzz on the other hand is a solid sound, truly massive, so a symmetrical enclosure was needed. And black. With an upward-sloping desktop style is nice - and then a load of handy features and LEDs. Plus the meter, and an Igor pressure pad controller…. It has a lot going on, design-wise.
I know these are just effects pedals. They’re not actually The Thing Itself - but if you can move towards that I think it gives an extra level of harmony in the design.
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