Episode 22 – The Best of 2024 with Mike Nicosia of Relic Music

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0:08 Welcome to the Pedal Collaborative podcast. We're so glad you're here. 0:22 Hey everybody. We are back another week of the Pedal Collaborative podcast. 0:27 It's Paul. I'm here with Alan. 0:28 Hey. And this week, I think we teased this before the holidays in its rough form of function, but we have 0:35 a special guest. We have Mike Nicosia from the Relic Music Shop in Red Bank, NJ How's it going, Mike? 0:42 Hey guys, how are you? Thanks for having me. 0:44 I don't know how special I'm going to be, but I'll definitely be a guest for sure. Well, I you were very special. 0:50 We'll talk about why you're special here in SEC, but we're going to be doing a format here today that we wanted to have Mike on because Mike has an awesome shop for those of you who don't know 0:58 about it. We're definitely going to link to that and give you a chance at the end, Mike, to plug anything you 1:02 guys have going on here coming up. But because of the unique position Mike has as a owner of a very cool shop that has very cool gear 1:10 that people that listen to this podcast will definitely be into and you've definitely seen we're doing a an award. 1:17 It's award season. So we are doing our awards for 2024 for guitar pedals. 1:22 We had to trim it. I actually trimmed it down quite a bit because I think this episode would have been like 2 hours if 1:26 I kept all the categories in. It still might be, who knows? 1:30 It might know. We, we might see. 1:31 We'll see where we go, but we're going to get into it. Mike, you want to talk a little bit about the shopping yourself before we get into the categories 1:37 here, though? Yeah, I'll, I'll keep it as brief as possible. 1:40 I'm, you know, I grew up obsessed with the stuff like anybody else. And I kind of got back into it from a, from a business perspective when I got a part time job at 1:53 another shop while my ex was writing her dissertation. So I ended up, you know, only wanting to do it for a year. 2:02 I stayed for 2 1/2. Then I ended up running the place after that. 2:05 And then after I did that for a little while, I decided, you know, you know, I've always wanted to open my own shop and now is the time. 2:14 So the shop's been open since October 2021. It took me less than 10 months to get from deciding I was going to do it to opening, which I'm 2:25 pretty proud of, especially considering if anybody out there listening has ever been there and has seen it or seen any of the pictures online. 2:34 One of the, you know, biggest things we get compliments on us, how we have everything laid out and how everything looks. 2:40 And then it's we get one of two reactions. It's either can we curse on this or no, I'll keep it as clean as possible. 2:48 I'm, I'm just, I'm just quoting people. It's either I don't know what any of this is or holy shit, I can't believe you guys have this 2:57 because there's, to me, there's plenty of stores that do the big box stuff and, and a lot of that's cool if that's your, that's what you're into. 3:05 I find myself more into these smaller builders these days, not just from a pedal perspective because we do have pedal companies that literally nobody else has, but you know, the built guitars of the 3:19 world, Frank Brothers, you know, Castadosa, Dunnable, Abernathy Fano, you know, Nash, all those are companies that we are dealers for at our shop. 3:30 And you know, I, I just wanted to do something a little different. I wanted to have a, a nice space where not only is the inventory awesome, but people are comfortable 3:40 people from all walks of life. You know, nobody wants, we don't want anybody being intimidated or feeling like there's any stupid 3:46 questions, you know, 100% acceptance, tolerance, you know, whatever your skill level, knowledge level, you know, we don't, you know, no judgement. 3:58 And we all we want to do is like, you know, teach and spread the good word of of the good gear and stuff and and tell you guys about these brands where frankly, you know, when I say this all the 4:09 time, buying something from one of these guitar companies or one of the pedal companies means so much more to the people that own them than if you bought something from a big box guitar company. 4:22 Buying something from one of those guys, you're just a number on a spreadsheet or an A line item. When you buy, you know, a doneable or a built or you know, a slowly melting from dirge or an RM1 N 4:35 from industrial electric, like these are small, one person to four people operations and it makes their day and it makes their year. 4:42 So I'm in this for relationships and I'm in this too just because I have a genuine obsession and love with it. 4:49 So, you know, I've lived it my whole life and I'm basically living, you know, in a dream come true scenario where I was fortunate that I was able to do this and that we do continue to be able to do 5:00 this. Yeah, man, that's awesome. 5:03 And I mean, I can see just even the way you run your social media channel, it's clear you love the stuff, you love sharing it with others. 5:10 I mean, that's what we do too. That's Alan and I have joked many times while talking about this podcast and the channel. 5:16 This is just because this is conversations we're having already with people. And now we just professionalized it a little bit. 5:22 You mean you guys aren't getting rich doing this? Yes. 5:25 Shockingly, no me. Me. 5:27 Me either, ironically. Wow. 5:29 I wonder what's what's the issue there? What's going? 5:31 On love of the For the Love of the Game. I will say before we get into pedals though, there is a guitar. 5:36 I have not wanted a guitar for a while. I'm very happy with my guitars. 5:39 I've had some of my guitars for like 15 years. That Phano JM 6 and Burgundy mist you have right now. 5:45 I saw that on your listing the other day with the sale you guys have going and that yes, that one tempted me a bit. 5:52 So let me let me tell you something about those guys real quick. They are unbelievable. 5:57 So every they're big in the news right now because you know them and Novo had their merger, which I think is great for both sides. 6:05 But every single guitar we've gotten from Fano has been exceptional like crazy. The only reason why that one is hung around, every time we get one, it sells within two weeks 6:18 because they're that good. I messed that one up and I'll tell you how. 6:23 In my opinion, I had it conceptualized with a different set of pickups. At first they couldn't get the pickups, so we went with the Zoom Trons, which I love. 6:33 Now, that's not how I messed it up. How I messed it up, in my opinion, is this. 6:38 Typically, folks who want JM shapes in that finish are going to want to trim. Folks who want JM shapes with a Tuna Manic and a stop tail tend to stay away from ostentatious 6:51 colors like that. You're burgundy missed your shell pinks, which I personally love. 6:56 Now here's the other thing. I already have a burgundy missed JM, otherwise that would have come home with me a long time ago. 7:03 But yeah, that one I, and I'm not like, you know, I'm not saying everybody go buy it, but it's, it's truly an exceptional guitar. 7:10 And I just want to those guys offered to even take it back and do something different for us because we're not used to having those guitars like hang around for more than a month. 7:19 It's like crazy. It's not because the guitar is no good. 7:22 It's because it takes a very specific, it fits a very specific small kind of niche, I guess you could say, yeah, that guy that wants that person that wants that colour JM with a tunomatic and a 7:35 stop tail. So I think you're you're saying, Paul? 7:38 Paul is literally describing. It's literally Fort Paul. 7:40 Yeah, when I saw it, I was like, oh man. So we'll see if we get tempted again. 7:45 But. Road trip, Road trip out to Yeah, we're headed out. 7:50 But all right, so let's get into this. My goal here and I, I'll explain the format for everybody who listening is we're going to go 7:56 category by category. Each of us is going to present our choice because I was like, I could come up with a bunch of 8:00 nominees, but we'd be that would also elongate our time on these. And then we'll we'll kind of briefly sort of make our pitch for each one and then we'll pick, we'll, 8:09 we'll pick a winner because maybe, I mean, I already know something Alan said earlier. I was like, I didn't think about that one for this category. 8:14 So. I might change my choice. 8:16 So. I feel like. 8:18 I feel like Mike is going to throw out some brands that I'm a little embarrassed to not have ever heard of, and that's super exciting. 8:27 And that's the reason we want that. We want that on this podcast. 8:30 I want more pedals. I'm glad you guys kind of told me this year because like it really helps me, you know, I I could 8:36 talk about this for six weeks if it's just like a free for all, you know, So the guidelines really going to help me stay on task and stay on, you know, topic, I guess so. 8:47 Yeah, I suspect, Mike, we're going to have to have you on again just talking about. Pedals anytime. 8:52 A blast so. Anytime. 8:54 All right, so let's get into it. I'm going to start with our first category and our first category for our for our pedals of the year 9:00 of 2024 is our best supporting OverDrive for outstanding achievement and low to medium gain. So, Mike, I'll let you present first, then we'll go Allen and then I'll go third. 9:10 Mine's going to be a little. Mine's going to be a little controversial because it can sort of go past the low gain stage, but it 9:18 does the low medium gain really well in addition to more and that you're. Starting with controversial like. 9:25 You're I know what's going to happen The the electronic audio experiment. Science Mother Preamp, that's my and that came out very early. 9:33 I had to go back and look to make sure it came out January 9th of 2024. And everybody forgets about it because you can't find them. 9:41 Like we get them in twos and threes and then they go like, I don't even own one because we get them and they sell so fast. 9:47 But that one is like it's a really great preamp channel of a science mother. It's a great always on, but it can get into that medium to borderline higher gain territory. 10:00 But for the low gain stuff that like dirty ish clean it's unbelievable. Really like that choice. 10:07 I've not gotten my hands on that one yet, which as you said, Mike, all EAE stuff is hard to, but I've watched quite a few demos of it and it sounds phenomenal. 10:15 So. It makes me want to science mother amp actually. 10:17 It's that good. All right, Alan, what are you? 10:20 What are you putting in here? OK, so on this one I'm going to go with the Nordvong altitude. 10:27 Oh. That's a which is their little like Blues breaker, their small box, their small pedal Blues Breaker 10:34 style. Nice. 10:37 I haven't had the chance to play that one yet. We've we're not a dealer for those guys, but I've had a few things in used and the stuff I've had in 10:43 used, the build quality and the sound has always been pretty damn good. So. 10:47 I'll have to check that one out. Let me see. 10:50 Do you, Mike? Can you see me on camera? 10:53 I can, yes. OK. 10:55 This is the thing. Let me go back to this. 10:58 Everybody else who can't see me the inside of the pedal, it is insane. Clean. 11:03 You could eat off it, but these these parts like you could totally eat off it. Like the components he uses are just incredible. 11:10 So. I just was at the at the NAMM show and the wood wire vault show and and the Windsor Brown's thing 11:17 and R2R electric was there. I don't know if you've ever heard of him, but he does incredible treble boosters, rangemaster stuff 11:25 and like Nos tone built tone Bender stuff. He has similar, you know, all new old stock components. 11:33 But the coolest thing I saw that he did was all the pedals were open and on the inside of the pedal. You know the train, how people write, like clever sayings, funny thing, whatever. 11:43 He literally had the ingredient list on there which was like super fun. Yeah, I'm looking at the treble booster right now. 11:51 The guts of it on his website. It's insane. 11:53 Yeah. It's awesome. 11:56 Awesome. Very good selection. 11:58 I it's cool it I will say too, it's funny on this list, Mike mentioned it having to figure out what came out in 2024 because 2024 actually felt like five years ago now that. 12:06 My God, January. This January feels like it's taken three years. 12:10 Yeah, I was like, what came out and then so, all right, so my my submission was, and this is admittedly recency bias because I just got this pedal and I've been really loving it, but I will say 12:20 it sounds great. I did the 1981 Inventions DRV Mod 1 which has actually led to now a full new version of that pedal 12:29 called the DRV 2 and what I like about it is it's a rat, which normally I don't like rats and I find them actually more high gain. 12:38 The mod one has two cool things. It has a zero gain mode where if you turn the drive all the way down the other two knobs work. 12:44 It's just a really nice preamp and add some grit and warmth. 2 because of the name mod one, it comes with actually two additional op amps that if you take the back of the pedal off you can flip them 12:55 out for different sounds. Interesting as. 12:58 A as a noodler, that was for me really cool. And then I've just been really loving how it fits in with different Dr. pedals. 13:05 It hits that low to medium in a way that normal rats are just like, you know, nasally, throaty. They have the rat thing. 13:12 So that's that's my selection. The stackable thing for these is pretty important, right People, people think about that stuff all 13:19 the time. How does it stack with others? 13:21 And you know, I've, I don't, I know I've played plenty of those 1980 ones. Again, I'm not I don't have too much experience with Nordvang one, but both yeah, the science and 13:31 that one stacks pretty damn well. So cool. 13:34 So I'm going to actually make a decision on the fly, and I'm saying it on the podcast, since we're just all presenting items, we should let our audience vote on which one they want. 13:41 Love it, because we're not going to come to a consensus. We're just coming up with cool stuff. 13:44 So all right. My answers are right, that's the consensus. 13:47 Yeah, that's right. OK, right. 13:49 So all right, those are our nominees for best supporting OverDrive. We will announce them on the next episode about who who wins the vote. 13:56 We'll figure that out and we'll do this. I just lifetime idea. 13:59 I love when we do this on the podcast where people hear the behind the scenes ideas. All right, next is we're going up in gain. 14:05 We're going to the best leading distortion for excellence in high gain territory. So Mike, you're up first again. 14:10 What do you have on this side of things? Well, you're probably not going to like this given what you just said, but I actually have. 14:17 And again, we'll get a little controversial because I I can't pick. I have two. 14:21 It's a dead heat for me and that's between the Caroline Wave Cannon Zero and the Jam Rattler MK2. Let's talk about the Rattler first. 14:32 Obviously based in a Rat in that Rat world, right? However, this is based on up, the original vintage Rat. 14:41 I don't know if you guys know a lot about jam pedals, but they're not doing anything in terms of like granular synthesis or time stretching or anything crazy like that. 14:50 They just make really, really incredible analog pedals. They couldn't find a chip, a a a transistor they liked enough to use to to make these. 15:05 They made their own. So if you guys ever have occasion to listen to it, it's one of like with the, you know, I've only 15:16 heard a handful of vintage original rats in my time. We can't keep these in stock because it sounds so good and it has the two switches for the little 15:25 bit of extra. It's one of those things where you get tons of gain out of it, but you still hear like tremendous, 15:33 tremendous clarity. Wave Cannon. 01 of the first people I met in this business was Philippe from Caroline. 15:42 And I met him because in 2012 or 2013, I can't remember, I bought a custom Cannonball on on their website which was based, which is the custom shop version, little bit higher end components of their 15:56 original Wave Cannon super distorter. I got a phone call within 5 minutes of ordering the pedal and it was him and we were just talking 16:05 about the pedal. So I've owned every iteration of that. 16:09 The one thing I love about it so much is that there's a couple things. The cannonball has what he calls the havoc mode, which is like self oscillation momentary feedback. 16:20 You could tune it in with the voltage sag, which is really, really cool. As a dude who, you know, played as most of his teenage adolescents, using the boss super distortion 16:29 feedbacker as a as a main, one of my main distortions, having the the havoc, the momentary havoc to be able to dial in feedback that you know, anytime you want was clutch. 16:40 The problem with that one was it really liked being first in the chain. If it wasn't first in the chain, the havoc mode would drastically suffer. 16:50 The new version, it has a first or any place sub switch, so you can have it anywhere in your chain and you get the havoc. 16:57 And oh, by the way, the havoc could be on 100% of the time. It could be latched or momentary and you know, you stop playing and it's just on feature set. 17:07 I tell I say this all the time, feature sets awesome. But if the pedal doesn't sound good, then what the hell is the point? 17:13 This thing sounds amazing. It sounds like you if you play playing riffs with it, you play you power chords with it. 17:21 You play in drop tunings with it. You could play an open G chord and the highs don't get washed out by the lows. 17:27 It's it's super clear, super tight, plenty of gain. That's those are my picks. 17:33 Like that, we're big, we're big fans of Carolina here. So that's not one I've had my hands on and I just added it to my list. 17:40 So there we go. Right now, what do you have for high gain? 17:44 Oh OK, so you know me and high gain, we don't get along too much so this is one I haven't tried but I'm super intrigued by. 17:51 It and tweaked by. And tweaked by the collision device is TARS Deluxe which is more fuzzy but it's high gain to me. 18:01 I respect that. Yeah, we, I mean, from what we've heard from the fuzz in the black hole symmetry, I can only imagine 18:07 that the TARS pulled out and having all the control is probably phenomenal. It's awesome. 18:11 We, we, we carry them and that's, that's a fantastic. Pedal nice. 18:15 Yeah, they make, I think we've tried everything but the TARS. So we've been very happy with collision device. 18:21 That's a good choice. So let me put that in here, my choice. 18:24 And if you, if those who have listened to the podcast probably could already guessed, I put this because I've been pitching this to like anyone who'll listen as a new, as a new 2024 pedal. 18:32 I didn't go distortion, I went fuzz. But the Keely Octosi with the fuzz and the octave, it's a little bit of a category Bender, But I, I 18:42 have gone on a very long fuzz journey to find one that does what I want it to do in the way that I play and the way I fit it in and like wash out wall of sound stuff and the control and the 18:52 flexibility of that guy. And then the bonus of having an octave that you can flip the order of you can flip buffered bypass, 18:59 true bypass. It just sounds good. 19:01 It does what I want it to. And even though this is not the category for it, it's very cool to be able to do the momentary dive 19:07 bombs on that octave pedal with a fuzz on the other side. Sure. 19:11 So wrong category. I, I, I cheated. 19:13 I I said I was like, I'm cheating the category we're all doing. A little. 19:16 Well, I had guys, I had some moments of that myself, which we'll get into later. But I'm going to say since just for the purposes of the category being like highest gain, the 19:27 Caroline does have a little bit more gain than the Jam I find. So that'll be my final answer. 19:33 All right. So we don't produce the voters out. 19:34 There, I like that. I'll put the asterisks there to remember that later. 19:38 All right, so we've passed the drive section. We're going to hop into the best performance in a modulation role. 19:44 So celebrating our innovations and movement and swoosh Mike, go ahead. What do you got? 19:50 This was tough because there was a few things that came out this year. The non human Benson florist comes to mind. 19:58 But if I had to pick one, there's a lot of reasons I'm picking it. It's the red panda radius. 20:05 I'm a big fan of ring mod. Nobody ever comes out with ring mods because. 20:09 They're not exactly something you see on every single pedal board. I have an original MF1O42, you know, Mogufoca ring mod. 20:17 I have the Randy's Revenge from Fairfield Circuitry, which I found to be the most musical of all. The Radius does both, which is unbelievable. 20:27 And you can get sort of all sorts of different types of modulation sounds, borderline like Univibe, like a swirly phasey sounds out of it. 20:39 You can get arpeggiated step sequencing ring mod type sounds out of it. Kurt's a genius. 20:48 That pedal is amazing, and that's my favorite. I think that that deserves the achievement for best modulation pedal of 2024. 20:57 I will have to check that one out. That sounds awesome and we it's funny we talk about ring mod is something like not a lot of people 21:02 know how to use either beyond the fact that nobody makes them. So that is one I'm adding to my list as well. 21:09 This is cool because also I'm finding new things to lust after. So this is a great episode for me. 21:13 There you. Go, I really need to I need to get into the more the red panda stuff. 21:17 I just I get intimidated by just how much they pack into like 1 little pedal. Yeah. 21:22 So I'll say this and a lot of people say this and a lot of people tell me this about Chase Bliss stuff too. 21:28 It's it's very plug and play, but you can spend an eternity getting all sorts of stuff out of it. The thing about pedals that I have to tell people, I tell people all the time is you don't have to 21:42 get 18 sounds that you love out of a pedal. Like if you buy a pedal, you don't have to use it 15 different ways. 21:51 I know most guitar players I know, you know, with the exception of some that have presets, they set it and forget it, right. 21:58 The reverb is set a certain way. The delay, you know, might be as tap or they'll change the they'll change the delay time or what 22:05 have you. But like, you know, my jam waterfall course, the the knobs stay in the same space the whole time. 22:13 I never move them. And with with the red panda stuff, one thing that he added with the V twos, which I found 22:20 exceptionally helpful is the preset capability. Nothing, nothing will, you know, make you feel paid studio time pressure than setting the tempo in a 22:31 red panda particle V1 to match another delay you're using. So everything is in time with the click track. 22:39 Yeah. So the the presets and the tap make a huge difference. 22:43 If you ever, ever have any questions about that, you know, you could always reach out. I I have like almost all of them and I love them. 22:49 And not to, you know, go off on another tangent, but they just came out with a new pedal this year that is a stripped down version of the Raster, which is just like a pitch delay that's much more 23:00 simplified. So check that out too. 23:04 Checking it out that. Was a man. 23:06 Oh, OK. Is it not on their website yet? 23:09 Oh, OK. OK, OK. 23:11 So that's coming up. That's cool. 23:12 Very cool, very cool. Paul, for me, the best modulation came out probably I was at the spring, but the walrus monumental 23:23 I. You really like that one? 23:25 I do. I do because I love the stereo movement. 23:30 So having having the the presets in there, having the stereo spread it just, it does it for me. All right, all right, I respect that one. 23:39 That's a good choice. I I I on mine I had to go between 2:00 and I'm going to say I'm both just because I didn't realize 23:47 one of them was actually released in 2024 because it was announced at the end of 23. My first one there was the hologram chroma console, which is obviously way more than a mod tool I. 23:58 Was going to say that's a little category bendy, but I'll you know. That's why I didn't say it. 24:02 I just needed to mention it because the whole the whole movement section on that pedal. So Mike, I do a lot of film scoring as a lot of my music production and the Chroma console became 24:10 just my desk buddy as soon as it came out. Just sitting there and being like, all right, I need to sound design something. 24:16 And you know, when you have a ton of pedals, you almost get choice overload, the movement on that. There's really, really good mod stuff in there. 24:23 But what I did choose is also a little category bendy. But the modulation in it, in the way the pedal works and interacts was the champion. 24:30 Lucky Skitzy. That pedal. 24:34 That pedal is one that as soon as I got my hands on it, it was one of those pedals I knew I was going to keep forever just because the the interaction between the sway verb and the trim verb, 24:44 which is like verb with modulation. The fact that that pedal can go from sounding like super, super beautiful to just incredibly 24:51 seasick. It has so much packed into it. 24:55 Wooly makes great stuff and I that pedal is one that I grab whenever I just want to like play and be inspired and so I feel. 25:03 Like we love him and we love his stuff that that skitsy came out I think the same time as unclean. I remember there was two that came out at the same time as another release where it was like they 25:14 shared a day, maybe they shared a day with two other pedals And I was like, but that that is a great 1. 25:19 So quick story about the chroma console real quick. We do. 25:24 We do a lot with the guys from Built and they apparently had a customer ask them to put a chroma console in a guitar because they do a lot of effects and guitars. 25:34 Yeah. Honestly. 25:36 Or just the pedal itself got too it get and they the the dudes from holograms said it would just get too hot to do that. 25:43 You don't want to do that. So they tested it and they're like, yeah, there's no way we can do this, which is crazy because they 25:50 they put a CXN 1970. I was going to say I just. 25:53 Saw that. I just saw that. 25:56 How in the hell did they fit that into a guitar? They're amazing. 25:59 They're a true custom shop. They don't do any CNC ING, they build everything by hand. 26:04 They're just phenomenal. That is crazy. 26:09 I mean the yeah, imagine the chroma console. You know guitar would also be like I mean you lose some of the fun tapping of the like loop holder 26:16 if you do it that way, you know like the quick loop. You could freeze the sound. 26:19 But anyhow. Paul, there's I'm on Bill's website, there's they have like modular like you're a rack built into 26:28 one of their guitars. Yup. 26:31 All right. Yeah, they're amazing. 26:33 They're amazing. I've heard of them, I've seen them, I've seen some of like some bands tour with it, so I know they 26:39 make great stuff. It's just wow. 26:42 Yeah, one thing I'll tell you about them. I'll tell you two things real quick and we'll go if I the way I explained built to people who don't 26:48 know about them is if Fender custom shop master builders had a separate Willy Wonka wing of the of the factory where the two people that were there were 10 times better than everybody else and they 27:02 were allowed to do whatever the hell they want. That's built. 27:05 The other thing is their guitar start at like 2500 bucks for a custom made guitar handmade. Yeah, that's actually really impressive. 27:15 Yes, 100%. We're one thing we're going to focus on this year is a lot more in that realm with those guys 27:21 because every time I do something with them, it's crazier and crazier. The craziest thing I did with them was right before anniversary party, I did a new Elombre in their 27:32 finish called Trout Sparkle with a Mastery Bridge vibrato, a Right to Sound 1991 gazing set, an EGC aluminum neck, and a dirge slowly melting inside of it with Evan etching the pickguard. 27:48 And I was like, this thing's going to be here for six years because who? This is such a weird thing. 27:52 It was gone within 5 days and I had somebody else. I had two other people ask for it after it sold. 27:57 So I just keep doing the weirdest stuff and people keep digging it, which is super fun. So yeah. 28:03 I love that. Yeah. 28:05 So all right, let's move into the category that Alan loves the most. I mean, they have, they have, they have a guitar here with a blooper and a grand orbiter in it. 28:16 Uh huh. Yeah, they just did one apparently where the guy asked for 8 pedals inside. 28:21 Yeah. I mean, honestly, you kind of can, you know that you're you're able to take your rig really easily. 28:27 You put it in a guitar chase, you're good. So. 28:29 Yeah, they're doing right now. They're one of the builds we have in the queue for them is they're making me a Zaftig Basics with 28:36 AV1 Dark Star in it. Oh my gosh. 28:40 OK, that's very cool. All right, so we're going to spend some time on build guitars later on. 28:47 So the the effects category that I think we are most known for, Alan is next. And your favorite, my favorite, the best time based effects in a leading role, excellence in delay 28:57 and reverb, which is so many good things. Mike, what do you have here? 29:03 Well, again, this is like I have more reverbs and delays than I have anything else in my in my setup. 29:12 But if I had to pick one pedal to me that was my favorite in that kind of realm this year, it would have to be the new old blood Dark star. 29:23 I am a I'm I'm AI my old my old settings when the when the dark star first came out, they used to have my old settings for it in the printed manual. 29:32 So like, I've been dark Star obsessed since it first came out. I'll be buried with that pedal. 29:39 The way I used the old one is now completely different than the way I used the new one. The way I use the new one is like the the algorithm and the voicing of the reverb itself. 29:50 It's just it sounds like you have a whole bunch of stuff on, but at the same time it sounds like it's part of your sound. 29:59 The fidelity is off the charts. I am really hard on reverbs. 30:03 I hate most reverbs out there. I'm not really a big fan of spring reverbs. 30:07 I don't like the, the sponginess and the kind of chirpiness of them. I I like more of a plate room kind of sound. 30:16 And this one, you know, I, I continue to be impressed by favorite thing about it is that filter knob all the way the that you can get so many different sounds out of it and having, you know, the aux 30:32 switch to do a few different things and the holding of it, it just, and it just again, feature set is great. 30:38 If it doesn't sound good, what good is it? It sounds incredible. 30:42 And now like I didn't replace my other one because I'm using it completely differently. So I have both. 30:49 We, we did a run of 20 of those in our in a custom colorway we came up with and they sold out. Gorgeous, by the way, and all has one. 30:57 Which Mike I that is actually how we oh. You got 10. 30:59 That's right. That's right. 31:00 Nice. First connected, yes. 31:02 Yes, Yep. Well, I was going to actually say that one. 31:04 So I'm going to pivot to my second choice. You could you listen, you could agree he could be, you know, Alan could be an outlier. 31:10 So here I'm I'll, I'll, I'll give one more one more thing about this real quick is that so I put out a poll because I had a bunch of people asking me for that one after we sold out of them. 31:21 It's like, should I put out more a different color way? Should I do more of those? 31:25 Should I just do the stock ones? Well, you can imagine the stock ones are all really nice. 31:31 Nobody said do the stock ones and I had a handful of people wanting to do reissues of those. But when I do those custom colorways, I only like to do them like one time because I want the people 31:43 who buy them to feel like they got something special. So right now we are doing 10. 31:50 Brady just sent me the enclosures. I have one of our visual artist friend hand painting 10 and with with a in a very specific way that 32:02 you know, it's going to be like nothing we've done before. And a lot of my fellow nerds out there will absolutely love it when it's done. 32:10 So I can't give any more information than that, but we'll have 10 hand painted ones. I'm not sure when because I told the artist to take her time, but it's going to be pretty epic. 32:19 Well, you're going. To you might have to get. 32:21 You might have to get the other relic customs inside of the first one. I mean actually, you know, our buddy Chris is a sucker for hand painted, so he's probably going to 32:29 be true like camping outside your shop for release day on that. All he has to do is ask me and he can get dibs on one. 32:35 That's it. He's enough to camp. 32:37 Yes, hi, Chris. There you go. 32:38 You can camp though. Well, we know he's going to listen to this at some point, so he'll he'll know that he has a new 32:43 thing to wait. Wait for Yeah. 32:46 And Paul, I just fact checked Mike here and yes, on the old Dark Star printed manual he is in there. It's the only suggested setting, so. 32:58 Yeah, I ran that one hundred 100% wet at all times and it's like I used to have a vintage boss slow gear and it kind of crapped out on me. 33:07 But that's kind of how I use it for like the auto swells. And it's just like, yeah, if you listen to any band I've done since I've had that, it's all over it. 0:00 It's awesome. 33:18 Yeah, I love it. Nice. 33:19 All right, now, what's your, what's your, your choice in this category since I had the same one as Mike so. 33:24 OK, so on this one, I chose the Matthews technician because of what he what Rick just jammed into a pedal, you know, delay, reverb, looper. 33:39 It hints to some of the sexiness of a chase bliss, but it's definitely his own design and it's it's pretty impressive. 33:49 So that's that's where I landed. I mean, yeah, that pedal, I was surprised also because it was such a drastic change in how their 33:58 pedals have been. Like they kind of had those like single pedals. 34:01 And then this is like a totally new thing that is I kind of came out of nowhere. I remember I, I remember sending it to you on Instagram. 34:08 I was like check this out. Like what is this from Matthews? 34:11 Yeah, it's got some, it's got some CXM vibes for sure with the the buttons. Yeah. 34:16 Yeah, nice. Yeah, that's a, that is a good one. 34:19 So yes, I also had the Dark Star honorable mention, which is category bending 'cause I got one for the first time this year. 34:26 I got one of the 10th anniversary Maris Maris LV XS in black. Yeah. 34:31 And Alan had been trying to sell me for like a year or so on the LVX and I was like hesitant. And then I have a I'm a sucker Mike for black pedals. 34:40 So when that came out, I was like, all right, I'll take the jump. And it did not disappoint. 34:45 The LVX is like a ridiculous sound machine in all ways that you could want it to be. So that's my honorable mention since I wanted to say something different even though Mike. 34:53 And I, well, if you want to give the, if you want to give the folks listening the third option to pick, maybe we can, you know, you could put that up there if you want. 34:59 I'll say this Merit, the merit stuff is awesome. Terry's a great dude and we will have them at the shop very soon. 35:06 Awesome. Good to know. 35:07 All right, we want. To come out to that. 35:09 Yes. All right. 35:10 So we've done our time based. We're moving into best sound design and experimental role pedals that push the boundaries of 35:18 conventional effects. This is a category I dearly love. 35:22 Mike, what do you have here? This is tough for me too, because I'm I'm in your camp. 35:26 This is like my favorite thing is like, you know, I tell people with pedals, like there's ones that that can help you with the sound you have in mind that you add to a, a certain part of a song and 35:37 there's ones you get that will inspire you to write new stuff. And then there's a couple that there's, you know, ones that do both. 35:43 But I have to give even though they're it's maddingly frustrating because I can never get them and I sell them out in stock as soon as I get them and I don't I never even got a chance to buy one 35:52 Prismatic wall from Electronic Audio Experiments. Mike, we're back-to-back putting the same pedal, Yeah. 35:57 John, John, John showed me that prototype a year before, well, well over a year before it came out when he had, he had the prototype of her anniversary party. 36:08 And when he explained it, what it was to me, I, I was just like, you're creating a pedal that sounds like the inside of a piano when a truck goes by and it shakes like who are you? 36:19 But the dude is a total genius. And I can't wait to get more of them because I just really freaking want 1. 36:26 And I just, you know, my, I have such a long list of customers that want them that are like, you know, even my friends and stuff. 36:33 And I'm like, I'm not going to, you know, just. Pig out, we won't. 36:37 Tell myself, yeah, so that's again for for creating something completely new that's never been done before that, you know, he gets all the credit in the world for that. 36:50 And the pedal is really remarkable. It's incredible. 36:53 Yeah, no, that one, I have actually not been able to play it. I have watched every single video anyone's made of it. 36:58 And I want it so bad 'cause it fits in with the noises I make. And so I put that on the list even though I haven't had my hands on it yet, 'cause I was like, 37:05 that's the one last year that like that's experimental. So we're back-to-back with the same answer. 37:10 So Alan, what's your, what's your submission here? And sound design. 37:14 It's the. It's the chromo console. 37:16 All right, that's the technically the correct category for this. They they don't really need, they shouldn't have put button like foot switches, they should have put 37:25 just buttons on it. You know 'cause. 37:27 It is a desktop machine. It looks weird on a pedal board. 37:31 Yeah, whenever I see it, it does feel like it's in the wrong place, so all right, so I will just add an honor roll mention just so we have a third one since Mike and I both had the Prismatic wall. 37:43 Here we go. I will put the Chase Bliss onward, which was a very weird pedal. 37:49 I I enjoyed the iteration of it from the I guess it was the Cooper Effects pedal before it was the onward, the outward and the IT was one of those pedals that I spent some time with. 38:03 It ultimately didn't keep keep in my list of I have too many pedals, but it was one of those ones where I had so much fun just plugging it in. 38:10 Not I, I usually plug things in and don't read the manual till later 'cause I wanted to see what happens. 38:16 And it was one of those things where I was like, I have no idea what the hell is going on with each position. 38:19 But it's always a weird fun new noise that I wasn't expecting at all. And that's pretty rare for nowadays. 38:27 Like usually I've played with enough pedals that I can figure out what's happening right away and know how to make it do things. 38:32 So I'll put that one as my honourable mention in that category. So we have another one in there. 38:38 All right, So this one, best comeback. So celebrating the best reissue or a new version of a pedal. 38:45 So this one's a little bit strange. Mike, what do you have here? 38:49 Let me first start by saying this is a pedal that I own that I'll be buried with. And when this came out this year, I and I I got to play it at the Baltimore Pedal Expo. 39:01 I wanted to give Dave Gill a huge hub from BSRI because the Wikipedia list of unusual articles, which is essentially a Boss VB2, slightly different components and he changed it has a separate 39:16 switch for momentary. But if you guys are looking, if you like, if you like but don't love chorus, you're looking for a 39:23 little bit of something extra just to add a little bit more of a three-dimensional bend to your sound or just a little bit more sparkle or like what is that? 39:33 I've I've used the Boss vibrato pedal for I can't even tell you how long. It's one of those ones that you just think is part of the clean guitar sound. 39:41 It just adds the perfect little something, but it uses the ACA power and it became kind of annoying to do that in my pedal board builds. 39:50 So I've literally been without it. And I had I bought the WASA craft one too. 39:55 And honestly, it's close, but the Wikipedia is the closest thing that was in fact like what I picked for our pedal of the year. 40:05 This year, Relic, because it made such an impact to my personal playing and we actually we did I think 10 or 13 hand painted by my good friend and visual artist Justin Hock. 40:17 They all sold out really quick, but now we have a couple of the production model ones and it's just again, unbelievable. 40:25 Fidelity's off the charts just really, really great. It's. 40:30 Cool, that is a very cool review. That is 1 I'd actually not come across. 40:34 I've come across quite a few of the BSRI ones. That's not one that I've come across before. 40:39 Well, we're he, he told us we're the only dealer that's going to sell them. So that's amazing. 40:44 Pretty awesome. Yeah, and what a great name too. 40:48 He he's the best for that. I just love that dude. 40:51 Yeah, like the what we don't know about the ocean floor for the court, those are just like the best names of petals that. 40:56 Yeah, the resurrected on planet Jupiter. That was my favorite phaser that came out last year in 2023. 41:01 I want to try the the soft rains and the smell of the ground reaver. Yeah, that's another one we did. 41:08 We did ten hand painted ones I had, Yeah, with Justin. Justin uses a mixed media approach of like vintage pages from vintage French books and epoxy and 41:20 paints and all sorts of crazy stuff. Yeah, pretty awesome. 41:23 That's cool, that's cool. All right, Alan, what do you have in this category? 41:28 So for me, I'm actually it's, it's boring, but I love it. The Keely Germanium Blues disorder. 41:38 That is a good choice. That is a very good I. 41:39 Haven't heard that one. So I mean, they they did it for I guess their whatever anniversary they had, it was actually so 41:47 sorry, actually it was Edmunds Music had I think their 50th anniversary. So Keely made like a batch of 50 that were gold and had a germanium inside of it and then put it 42:02 into quote UN quote normal run and just black. But only available through Edmunds Music. 42:10 But it's their basic Blues disorder. But it's got germanium diodes in it. 42:16 Awesome. And I love germanium. 42:18 Yeah, that one I have not. That's one of those ones, Alan, that I have not got my hands on from you cuz you got it and I never 42:24 got. To see I'm not letting you try it. 42:25 So yeah, that's just what happened. So I am going to do a thing where there's a second category nomination for me. 42:33 And we already talked about this pedal, but the Dark Star V3, the Dark Star was love it. OK, it it fit here. 42:39 Absolutely it fit here for me. I was instantly like Mike when I got that pedal in from you guys. 42:44 First off, that colorway with the purple and the gold. It beautiful. 42:47 It stands out. It's beautiful and it's one. 42:50 It's one of. Those it's the best color way that's ever been released on the V3, you know, thank you. 42:56 Yeah. And as soon as I had it in my hands, I spent and I like you, I'm very critical of reverbs because 43:02 I've tried every single one of them. I have more reverb and delay than I ever need. 43:06 If I look at my closet of boxes, I feel like a glutton when I look at that. And I plugged that one in and I spent like an hour and a half just finding new ideas and new sounds. 0:00 I literally just, I remember sending Alan clips. 43:17 I was just recording, sitting at my dog, just hitting things. I was like, this is a quality. 43:20 I'm going to send talent. This is quality, I'm going to send it. 43:23 And it just kept being fun to play with and it has not stopped. I love, I love also messing with the hold switch and changing what it does on the aux switch there. 43:32 It's just a great pedal. So that's my best. 43:33 About that filter, that filter knob is just something else. The filter knob there's AI remember the first thing I sent Alan is I had the filter to the left, so 43:41 getting a little darker. Yep. 43:43 And just this beautiful decay sound where it basically as I finger picked created a pad behind. It yeah. 43:49 Can I, can I, can I ask you this? Have you done it yet where you have done a hold where you you do like you get a pad going and you 43:58 have an expression pedal plugged in to assign to the filter knob and have that rock back and forth and just sweep between the? 44:06 I have not done that yet, but that needs to happen. Immediately. 44:09 Yeah. Heaven. 44:09 Yeah, that sounds divine. So yeah, it's it's that's, that's my one in this category A2 category nomination. 44:16 We're doing a a little Oppenheimer sweep here, like. Love it. 44:21 All right, so we are on to. We got two categories left and we're going to go a little faster because we're getting up against 44:27 time here. So lifetime achievement award. 44:30 This is. So Mike, we typically ask guests 3 questions We and one of them is usually like, what's your 44:34 favorite current pedal? So I'm going to fit this one in here a little differently as like, what's your favorite pedal of all 44:40 time? You've mentioned a few you're going to be buried with, so what's your one that you're putting here? 44:44 Well the one that really got me started on my bullshit, I guess you could say, is when I when I was a kid and heard vintage memory man self oscillate for the first time. 44:55 That was it for me. So I I have a handful and people have asked me this a bunch and sometimes it changes. 45:03 But like for me, I think the Mr. Black Supermoon Chrome is probably he deserves a lifetime achievement award for that pedal because that was one of the first pedals that and the and the 45:14 Eterna where the actual reverb algorithm itself sounded like something I'd want to use. OK. 45:21 Those are amazing. The Astro music tools ADG one, if you could find a special edition, great. 45:28 If not the regular 1 is incredible. Astro music tools is Hawker from Moog. 45:33 He did all the Mografover designs and he's doing his own thing. I had a Moog MF1O4Z on my pedal board for probably over 10 years and it was a pedal I would never 45:44 remove. This is the best sounding analogue delay pedal. 45:48 I will, I mean, I, we had a, we had a big band come in and I'm not going to say who they were because I don't kiss and tell, but like they, they were asked no, what, what's new in pedals this 45:59 and that and I, you know, I was like, oh, have you guys? What do you have for analog delay and like, oh, we all have carbon copies. 46:05 We're good. I'm like, oh, geez, whatever. 46:07 Fine. The tech was like, oh, I'll try it. 46:11 The their Rd. tech plugged it in. I set them up. 46:14 All of them, five of them bought this pedal so that the dirs slowly melting. I will always have one of those on my board. 46:24 And I guess the last one I'll say because we talked about some of the other ones is the plat esque ederslep, which I you know, I have barely turned that pedal off since I got it. 46:35 It does like the whole I don't know what this dude, what this dude does to these things, but I have I mean, I have the backlings, I have the dramae, I have the fabrikat. 46:45 I have most of his stuff. The etter slept is just if Paul as a guy that you know likes a closet full of reverbs and kind of 46:53 ambient stuff. If you can find one of these, buy immediately and you won't be sorry. 46:59 It's incredible. Good to know, good to know. 47:01 And my list is growing as we speak. This is wonderful, Al. 47:04 What's your What's your lifetime achievement guy? Well, did you know that this was going to be and an episode that's going to cost cost us money? 47:11 I didn't know that, but I'm definitely already. In it so. 47:14 It's alright, I'm opening. I'm literally opening reverb windows as we talk. 47:17 I'm adding to my want to. Treat better slept tough because he he will do drops and they sell out. 47:23 Like I was lucky my girlfriend bought it for me for Christmas last year. She had three computer windows open to try to get it because he's just one dude and he'll release 47:33 like 5 to the United States and the time difference and everything else like, but on on secondary market, they go for like almost twice as much as what they cost sometimes because of that. 47:45 Matter of fact, a good friend of mine had one and she knew how much I loved it. She brought it in the shop to trade and I was like really excited. 47:52 I was like, I'm going to get a second one. And she's like, how do you use it? 47:55 And I plugged it in. I turned some knobs. 47:57 She's like, yeah, I'm keeping it. I was like God damn it. 48:02 That's awesome. That is fantastic. 48:05 All right, Alan, you're up Lifetime. Achievement SO I'm going to actually put in here a it's it's two petals, hopefully about to be a 48:15 third, but it's more because of the user interface and we I know what you're going. To. 48:20 Say, I know you do shut up Mike. You've talked about some effects that have come out that really harken back to some of those vintage 48:28 pieces and really capture that tone very well. And I think that's really hard to do for me, having a time based effect that I continually can find 48:42 something new and creative to do. And quite literally to the infiniteness of my brain, say to myself, hey, I wonder what? 48:51 Let me just add, add a filter here or add some modulation here and be able to create my own sounds. My award has to go to to Maris for their LVX and for their Mercury X. 49:05 To me that I, I, I never reuse the same patch. I'm always creating something new and I it just excites me every time I turn those on. 49:15 I love that. Yeah, I knew you were going to say that. 49:18 I could have probably filled in your blanks on my notes. I'm taking here before you we even talked. 49:22 So all right, mine's real basic and it's just my own personal thing and it's just a pedal. I've actually tried several times to break up with this pedal and I always buy it back. 49:32 I'm actually on my 4th go round. I'm just going with the Striman timeline. 49:37 As a guy who plays with a lot of delay, it partially is my own like comfort blanket in that I've made so many presets for it over the years that I can just sit down and make a sound that I want. 49:47 If someone asks me, hey how do I get this, I can get a sound out of it. I know how it works backwards and forwards and I really thought the LVX was going to finally be my 49:57 like break up with it, but I still find a it's like a comfort blanket. It's my little blankie. 50:01 I take place is my timeline gets it done. I put it on my pedal board. 50:04 It does exactly what I ask it to do. And so I'm just going to do the the tried and true Striman timeline for me. 50:10 We should get built to make a pedal or a guitar with the timeline in there for you. That would be actually great. 50:15 I would really thrive with that so we'll. Consider that they could easily do it. 50:20 Yeah, it sounds like it. So all right, mine, I feel like mine was boring compared to the list you guys had in Alan's big 50:25 explanation for the Maris's. But all right, last category. 50:29 And then we're going to, we're going to wrap up because we're going to be frank, we're going to be really quick with everyone's time here. 50:34 His name is Mike, It's not Frank. It's your fault, Alan. 50:36 But anyhow, all right, so this is and this could be something we already mentioned, this could be something that you so best picture in the Oscars is usually just this is the one that feels the best 50:47 to overall, it was great. It felt good. 50:50 So pedal of the year for each of us. Mike, what are you saying here? 50:54 It is not something I've mentioned yet, but it's something something one of you mentioned. And for me it's the chase. 50:59 Bliss Onward. I'm a huge. 51:02 I use the freeze on my pedal board. For the longest time when I had the old DD5 from Boss I used to use that hold feature all the time. 51:10 This has both sides of that. You could use them at the same time. 51:14 You can use them independently the the onward works. It's like a freeze on tons of steroids where you can actually have it set to where you can either 51:26 just freeze the note and play over it, or it will just freeze each note you play and replace it with the latest note. 51:33 So like you can play a chord, it'll keep that going until you play another chord or note and then it'll do that one and it'll do that one. 51:40 I will say, Paul, to your point, it takes a little while. It takes a little bit of time to dial in, but I will promise you if you it's one of those things 51:49 where once it unlocks, you got to get that one dip switch down in the back, the latch dip switch. You do that and it's like if you're off to the races, Chase plus onward. 51:59 My 2024 Pedal of the year. Love that. 52:02 Choice. That's great. 52:03 Yeah, that's definitely, yeah. Alan, what do you have? 52:07 For me it's the discomfort designs phantom limb it is and I I'm picking it for two reasons. One because I generally dislike mono time based effects, but this one sounds so big and so full even 52:23 in mono even did that. Come out this year or are you just cheating the system here? 52:27 No, I'm not cheating. It came back, came out like in September. 52:29 OK, OK. You can Fact Check me and then I can I? 52:32 I will be wrong and I'll be disqualified. That's fine. 52:35 I feel like it came out before. But also, as I said at the beginning of the episode, 2025 has already been six years long, so maybe 52:42 I don't remember. Yeah. 52:44 That's a whole other podcast. Yeah, well, we had, we had a great talk with Nick from Wonder FX. 52:49 We got into some of the we released an episode Mike called The Great American Disappointment about his new pedal, the Wet Hot American Bummer the day after election. 52:57 And we got some very interesting dialogue in the chat because we didn't intend on doing that, but it worked out that it made a lot of sense. 53:04 So I was like, yeah, let's just roll with it, you know? I kept I kept calling the pedal the Great American Disappointment and again it just completely by by 53:15 happenstance that it was that that episode came out around the election and Paul and I decided to call it that regardless of the winner, so. 53:28 Yeah, so it worked. It worked out. 53:30 But so, yeah, we'll have a whole another episode. We want to talk about that, about other things. 53:33 But all right, my choice for this. And I went back and forth between 2:00, I already mentioned because I was like, there's so many 53:40 pedals I could put here. I'm gonna go with the chroma console and strictly for me. 53:48 The Chroma console. Are you? 53:49 Reusing. Are you reusing? 53:51 Because you already mentioned that. I know, but I'm, I'm putting it in my best. 53:54 I'm still going in my best. It's. 53:56 The I guess when you make the. Have you ever watched the Oscars and seen how movies? 53:59 Win for the category. Usually if you win best director, you win best picture. 54:02 Usually that's how it goes, right? Yes, I don't know usually does so I'm putting in here though for me I'll just talk about like the 54:09 use case of why it fit this way for me in so I finished up a film that I've been working on with friends for a couple years and in putting together the score in the studio. 54:21 I, you know, I have so many pedals I can choose from, fuzzes, drives, things. I love to make a synthesizer sound insane. 54:29 And we had a few technical issues the first time we tracked, so I had to retrack a bunch of stuff. And the second time I went into the studio, I took solely the chroma console. 54:39 I set it on top of a profit and I just had the chroma console and the profit and that ended up being 98% of the score was able to be sound designed in that way where it sounded different. 54:50 Just with those two things, a chroma console on top of a profit. And that to me just made it. 54:57 I was like, wow, this pedal just replaced me carrying a pedal board to the studio when I have to do things like this. 55:03 So that for me was a big win. Which profit it is the the 8 voice Rev 2. 55:12 Nice, I got my brother for his 40th birthday at profit 5. It's awesome. 55:17 Yeah, they that is one of those synthesizers that sounds like nothing else and it's hard to it. You just really can't recreate it. 55:24 The synth episode should be something different. I could, I could fill up a little bit of time with that. 55:28 All right, I feel like Mike's going to be back. Mike's going to be back. 55:32 All right, I'm going to wrap things up here. Mike, I'm going to ask you that that we have. 55:35 We we've already kind of hit one question. I just the one question I'm going to ask out of that. 55:39 There are two questions I was asked about one what was your first ever guitar pedal? First one ever that got you into the love of the game? 55:46 Oh boy. I think it's, I think it was honestly AD five. 55:50 I think that was my first one. That is an incredible choice. 55:54 I also love the D5 and I one of our delay episodes talked about that for a while. And then here's the one, the the other rapid fire question. 56:01 Who inspires you to try new gear? Now you're in the business, but who? 56:04 Like, is there anyone? An artist, a friend, someone inspires you? 56:10 I mean, it's gonna sound really stupid for me to say this, but I, I was writing music before I had a shop. 56:16 So like I, you know, there's a few bands that still kind of Get Me Out of bed in the morning, I guess that that inspire me. 56:24 Like I haven't turned the new Mogwai off. I've been listening to that record non-stop. 56:29 It's so good. But honestly, just, I just like writing music and exploring new sounds and, and the people I play 56:36 with, honestly, you know, I, you know, I and I love the thing I love about pedals so much is just how different people have different wheelhouses. 56:46 Like my cousin who is an incredible guitar player, doesn't does a ton of stuff in Chicago. He's incredible with pitch based effects. 56:55 Me, like I, I use my count to 5, but that's like a like a delay in pitch effect. But like the way he does pitch and filter stuff is something I can never wrap my head around. 57:06 And then, you know, you have people that are, you know, they can get such crazy stuff out of different fuzzes. 57:12 And it's just, I look at them like ecosystems where, you know, different people evolve, different species evolve differently in different ecosystems. 57:21 And it's really, it's just it's, it's and it's the builders that make them like, you know, it's fucking hard to make a guitar pedal to make a, to, to like make an original guitar pedal. 57:32 That's not an easy thing to do, you know what I mean? So somebody comes up with something new, Use the extreme example. 57:39 Prismatic wall. You know, me loving this stuff as much as I do that I owe it to them to listen, you know? 57:48 Yeah, absolutely fantastic answer. All right, well, I know we're going to have more episodes with Mike just because I want to keep 57:56 talking, but we have to do wrap it up. So Mike, is there anything special coming? 58:00 I know you have a sale right now, so anything you want to plug, anything you want to pitch for the shop yourself, personally, anything before we wrap up here. 58:08 Yeah, really quickly. The sale is really like we have. 58:10 We, we, I bought so much crap at Nam and I have so many new brands coming and so much stuff that I ordered a year ago is coming in. 58:18 I just want to make a little bit of room. So it's not something we typically do a lot, but like, you know, take advantage of it. 58:24 But the we, we do shows at the shop. The next show we're going to have will be April. 58:31 Let's see. Let me look at the date of that. 58:33 I believe it's going to be April 12th and it's, we're excited. It's going to be Courtney Swain from Bentley with Martin House, who she does this incredible vocal 58:43 processing and, and looping as well. And Andy Pitcher will also be playing. 58:48 I try to do 1 show a month free so that people can like have a place to go and, and hang out. I am in a band that that just recorded called Probability Cloud. 58:58 Right now Adam at Timber Studios is mixing our record. We tracked it with him and that was an amazing experience. 59:04 Not sure when that's coming out, but really just come visit, come say hi if you if anybody has any questions. 59:09 Like we do custom pedal board builds, you know, I, I do that if it's a day that ends in the Y, you could probably find me doing the pedal board build for somebody at the shop. 59:18 So, you know, it's we, we love doing it. It's therapy for me. 59:24 So I, you know, anything we could do to help anybody. If anybody has any questions, anybody has a sound in their head they can't get out, you know, we're 59:32 here to help. Awesome. 59:35 All right, well, we're going to link to a bunch of that stuff, Mike, and I'm going to keep an eye out for when your album drops with Probability Cloud. 59:41 That sounds awesome. Yeah, and if I could say one more thing real quick, I want to plug my my guys I have working for me 59:47 are incredible. You know Matt, his band Plaster had just recorded. 59:53 They played their first show at the shop. They're incredible. 59:56 If you like like really angular math rock stuff different times you're. A piece. 1:00:02 Phenomenal. And then my buddy Rocky, all his bands, Mercy Union and Best Dressed Ghost and all that stuff, you 1:00:12 know, check all that stuff out too. All right. 1:00:15 Thank you so much. Yeah, Mike, thank you so much. 1:00:18 Really appreciate it. Thanks for your time. 1:00:19 Thanks for your wealth of knowledge both continually on your channel in the shop, but also the I this was one of my favorite episodes we've done in a while because we've been, we've been off of it. 0:00 I've been looking forward to doing this ever since we first connected because I was like, oh man, 1:00:32 he's like fellow Traveller. I feel like we're going to like really get into pedals. 1:00:38 Thanks guys, I hope I didn't ramble too much. I tend to do that and there's nothing I can do for either one of you personally. 1:00:43 Please don't hesitate to reach out. Totally appreciate it man. 1:00:46 Well, we will talk soon and yeah, have a good one. Thanks, guys. 1:00:51 Peace. All right. 1:00:52 Bye. The. © 2025 Spotify AB Legal Privacy Cookies