Episode 31 – Staying Fresh in a World of Stale Clones, ft Meris

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0:08 Welcome to the Pedal Collaborative podcast. We're so glad you're here. 0:21 Hey everybody, welcome to the Pedal Collaborative podcast. I am your Co host Alan with my partner in crime Paul and today we have a special treat for you all. 0:32 With us today are the brains behind Maris. We have Terry and Angelo. 0:40 How are you? How are you guys today? 0:42 We're good, man. I'm good. 0:43 Thanks for having us on you're. Welcome. 0:44 I almost called you boys. I have no idea why. 0:46 Maybe it's from maybe just nerves, but yeah, thank you so much for for joining us today for this conversation. 0:56 I know a lot of our listeners both on the podcast and with the YouTube channel that we have. I mean, we're all Maris fans. 1:02 And I think to date the the creative episode that we did with Gina was has been like our highest listen to episodes. 1:10 So I mean, there's no competition between you 2, but in terms of, you know, the guys versus the girls, But hey, if you guys can beat that, then then you can just kind of gloat at the office and 1:22 say our episode was better. I don't know, it's up to you. 1:25 That's awesome to hear. That's that's my favorite episode too. 1:28 So I don't, I don't think we'll be beating it today. Definitely. 1:33 Well, again, super excited that you that you were here. You know, Paul and I have been fans. 1:39 I mean, we've been fans since before the LVX came out. But I know for me personally, the LVX kind of put you guys on the map in terms of, all right, this 1:47 is my go to. This is hands down, this is the platform that just beats everything else. 1:52 So wanting to get you both on here to talk about kind of the brains behind it. And we can go as nerdy as deep as you want. 2:01 Doesn't mean I'll understand it, but I, you know, we definitely have listeners that understand a lot of those things. 2:07 And I wanted to, Paul and I both wanted you, you, you folks to be on here and, and just kind of talk about that. 2:11 So. And while we talk about going nerdy and deep, I don't know that anyone will ever be able to beat 2:16 Steve Demedash's episode. He had with us where he went. 2:19 He went into the weeds on circuitry where I was like, I'm losing you, but I hope that people like this fun. 2:25 So yeah, but. Before we get there, why don't you both just give us a quick, you know, fly by of your career in the 2:35 effects world, you know, engineering and and really what got you to where you are in terms of creating Maris? 2:42 I mean, Paul and I know a little bit of it, but I'd love to hear it from from your standpoint and obviously your listeners, the more that they can understand that, that the better too. 2:48 So go right ahead. It goes it goes way, way back for I think for both of us. 2:53 Angelo have like and I grew up in in similar kind of time frame, you know, born in the late 70s, grew up in the 80s and 90s and I think both got guitars around the same time too. 3:10 Maybe Angelo a little bit a little bit sooner than me. But yeah, I had really cool, really cool dad who loved music and always had always had good records 3:22 around and also had an uncle who played guitar and was in bands and stuff. So I always, I always was interested and, and admired all his gear that he had in his room. 3:33 Was just fascinated with everything that was in there not knowing what it does, what it was, you know, being being, you know, 678 years old and, and going in his room and and just seeing all this, 3:46 you know, he had like a cool task him for track and and mixers and just one guitar and like a music man amp stuff. 3:55 Looking back that he had an ADA flanger. He had a, you know, crybaby pedal and so that made an impression on me for sure. 4:05 Growing up in Oxnard, actually just just South of us where we're at in Ventura right now. And then my dad and mom eventually got me a guitar when I was, I think 12 or 13. 4:19 And I just, I just like dove into it and loved it. And that's, that's after, after, after I got that, that's all I wanted to do in life, you know, 4:28 just, just just anything to do with guitar. So I, I quickly discovered that I was always kind of a tinkerer kid. 4:37 And I quickly discovered that I liked gear just as much as playing guitar. So became obsessed with, I got the Craig Anderton book and, you know, built a bunch of things that I 4:50 had no idea what I was doing. Just love studying schematics and then looking at this really technical stuff. 4:58 I just, I just was was immediately interested in it. Fast forward because to the time when I'm about 16 and I convinced a local amp technician to give me 5:12 a job and he was, he was awesome. He taught me so much. 5:15 His name was Pat Bewley and just a great guy. And I just learned so much working on amps and, and countless mixers and synths and just, you know, 5:29 replacing potentiometers all day long and broken things and, and I just loved everything about it. Actually I couldn't. 5:37 I couldn't wait to leave school to get to work so. That's a That's a pretty good indication or something. 5:43 Cool. I can't wait to work. 5:45 Yeah, yeah, yeah, I could. I could not. 5:46 I could not wait to get to work and and I didn't want to go back to school after that. But I did start college. 5:55 And then you after a few years, I dropped out of college to like, I basically got my dream job offer at line 6, you know, the amp company and I became engineering tech in the engineering department 6:14 there and got to work with amazing, you know, engineers and, and mentors. And then one mentor in particular, Michelle, he's one of the founders of the company was so generous 6:27 and nice and welcoming and he gave me chances to actually start designing things. So I knew enough at that point to to, you know, learn how to layout circuit boards and start putting 6:46 things together and, and eventually he taught me enough to encourage me to actually, you know, start to write code and, and all this cool stuff at at line 6. 6:56 It was just, it was just a amazing opportunity. So that is, I guess, the most condensed version of of my my early history. 7:09 And yeah, I'll let Angelo. Yeah, we, like, Terry said, we very similar trajectories. 7:18 I grew up in outside of Detroit in a immigrant Italian family and it was a lot of depression mindset. 7:27 And the idea was you, you got to learn to play an instrument so you don't starve. So as a little kid, I. 7:36 Didn't even know that. Yeah, as a little kid, I mean that that was kind of like the ethos, like my dad was he played 7:44 accordion, you know, he was, he was. And it was always fun to see him play. 7:49 But yeah, so for me, they they said, OK, they handed me a guitar and they're like, you got to learn this. 7:54 So you don't like die later on in life because they experienced that, you know, experienced that World War 2 and, you know, just through the hardship. 8:01 And so I got a guitar and at first it was, you know, taking lessons as a kid, I was like, this is a drag. 8:09 You know, it was like the old school Mel Bay books and like, God, there's no fun until like my interest changed. 8:16 And as soon as like around the same age as Terry, like around, you know, 12 or 13 and then that's all my life became about. 8:22 It's just guitar And and then it was all about, yeah, we're not paying for lessons anymore. So it quick, it quickly switched from mandatory lessons to yeah, we're not we're not paying for 8:33 this. So I started self financing lessons and, and, and just, but yeah, like, like, you know, diving into 8:41 magazines, Guitar World, guitar player, just kind of obsessed with everything guitar, obsessed with technology, you know, obsessed and just kind of dreaming about all those like crazy racks back then. 0:00 Like the, the DSP technology was just like, you know, it was kind of unattainable. 8:58 Like the, the, the price tag was just so high. So, yeah, similarly, you know, going through high school just focused on guitar and and I, you know, 9:10 when it came time to exit high school, my dad's like, hey, you know, you're OK at math, you better get an engineering degree. 9:19 I mean, I was, they they were nervous. I was just gonna go full musician. 9:22 Yeah. And and and and so they're like. 9:25 God forbid. Yeah, I know, I know. 9:29 I I mean it. Like you need to learn music to survive to like, dear God, no no, no. 9:33 Please stop. Yeah, yeah, it was, it was, it was, it was a wild swing and I just liked it too much. 9:41 So, so anyways, so I, I did that. I I I went University of Michigan, got my engineering electrical engineering degree and then joined 9:51 line 6 around the same time as Terry. I joined in 99 yeah and started doing DSP right away. 9:57 I started the first DSP code I wrote was the DL 4 was brand new. And so I wrote a bunch of like self test routines inside the DL4 code and then took on the ones 10:08 after that, like the MMM four and the DM 4, you know, and then those just be kind of came my baby and then just worked on pretty much all the, you know, fact pedals from then on, you know, so all 10:21 the the four by four series, the rack series, the tone core series. And yeah, similar to Terry, like the so grateful for the mentorship experience. 10:32 It was. It was the most generous place to learn and just cut your teeth on DSP and like just experiment and 10:39 come up with new ideas and try different things out. They were really like welcoming of like, hey, this is a cool idea. 10:46 Let's let's see what we can do with it. Let's put in one of our products. 10:49 And so, yeah, yeah. That's super cool. 10:54 I guess also for that time frame wise, you guys were like kind of right after the first pod launch when you started at line 6:00, AM I right? 11:01 There I. Feel nostalgic you guys talk about those pedals. 11:04 That's like we've done episodes about like our background early on in the podcast and like I think Line 6 riddled both of our early playing history of exploring pedals because they were kind of like 11:16 the coolest thing in town in the 90s and early. Yeah, it was a couple years after the pod. 11:20 It it seemed like it seemed like they were growing really fast at the time and and we got in right 99 two thousand. 11:33 It was like a really good time to to join the team. And but yeah, the pod was kind of already like, you know, they were they were successful already. 11:43 Yeah. That's awesome. 11:45 Yeah, and the the DL 4 was like my first, I mean it was my first DSP based effect pedal and I loved that thing. 11:52 I was. Yeah, I think it was for a lot of people, Like it was definitely like a gateway drug to DSP on pedal 11:57 boards. Yeah. 11:59 Well, and then I think for us, the exact arrow we can draw is from getting ADL four and getting addicted to delay and then eventually having an LVX as sort of nice, the current version of being 12:12 addicted to delay and all the things delay can do for your sound. So if we can draw a straight line there, aren't you? 12:18 Yeah. Absolutely. 12:19 Yeah, for sure. So you're at you're at line 6. 12:24 Yeah, we were sorry. We we cut you off, Angelo. 12:26 Yes, I got. Excited about the line 6 history and I interrupted SO. 12:29 Oh, yeah, yeah, no. And, and at line 6. 12:33 So, yeah, I was, you know, became their software director, just, you know, was in charge of their DSP and sound design departments. 12:42 But Terry had left to found Stryman. D Angelo's not talking about the more fun part where where we, we became friends at Line 6 and like, 12:54 talked about goofy comedy and, you know, like Mr. Show, a lot of Mr. Show inside jokes. Absolutely. 13:03 Yeah. Tons of stuff. 13:05 Yeah, we bonded definitely while we were there. Nice. 13:08 We got to work together on some insane channel stuff, stuff that featured the insane channel Spider 2 amplifier and and yeah, eventually, eventually I, I just had a little, little whippersnapper me. 13:28 I had ambitions to kind of start my own thing and I was working on, well, I guess at line 6, the way the engineering department was structured, I didn't have as grateful as I am about for all the 13:46 learning experience. I didn't have a ton of input over what the finished product was. 13:52 So I really wanted to have more control over that. So I quit Line 6 and Gina helped me start Striman like in our in our two-bedroom apartment. 14:06 And then, yeah, that was started off super humbly, you know, with me building everything by myself with, with the Striemann name on it, which was just a first little preamp mod project and and then 14:22 quickly evolved into more sophisticated pedals with the damage control guys. And you know, I worked on everything including Timeline and Gina branded all of that stuff and 14:40 logos, you know, Striemann name, Striemann logo. And we worked on that up until the Big Sky and then we left and then formed Maris. 14:55 I finally bugged Angelo enough times to where he said yes that he was going to come work with us. Yeah, lots of sushi lunches. 15:09 And yeah, no, super grateful, yeah. So let's, let's pause a quick SEC because, you know, I know we talked about this on the episode with 15:16 Gina, though Line 6 did a lot, you know, with the DSP world when it comes to effects. But I don't think anything was as influential in those mid, we'll call them the Middle Ages of, of 15:31 DSP in, in terms of what, what Striemann did what, what Terry, you as, as you indeed designed like the timeline and, and the Big Sky and the marketing beside it. 15:41 And just sonically, they were fantastic for the time. They were so good. 15:44 But to be able to have created a product over a decade ago that still holds its own is, is just, I mean, hats off to you. 15:58 That was that was fantastic. And I think it kind of it will lead into some of the questions I have about, I mean, do you guys 16:05 call it the X series like the LVX, Mercury X and Zoex? What? 16:09 How do you guys refer to it as? Yeah, not not officially, it just it just kind of evolved into, into that because of because of LVX, 16:19 because, you know, honestly, like when we were when we were designing that product, the easiest name would have been Poly Moon something, you know, because it was our next delay and maybe Poly Moon X 16:30 was brought up, but me and Angela were kind of stubborn about it, you know, a thinking that, oh, this is not a Poly Moon though. 16:38 This is, this is way, you know, Poly moon's a very small part of, of what this can do. And it's not really, it's not the same thing conceptually as Poly Moon was either. 16:51 So we went with LVX Mercury X became more of a super set of and more flexibility of, of reverbs that we had worked on that we had created before and then adding more things to it. 17:08 Enzo X is even more of a, of a of a grand, you know, has the original Enzo as its grandfather and then and then, you know, the more expanded version now. 17:21 So. So yeah, that's a long answer to say that this was kind of an accident for things to become X. 17:28 Sure, sure, sure. Well, I mean I refer to it as the X series, so. 17:32 We did. We did always intend for this to be for this to be, you know, multiple pedals and in one form factor 17:38 though, that's for sure. Well, let's get let's go to that in a second. 17:41 I don't want to get too far ahead. I you know, leaving, leaving Strideman, starting Maris and, you know, creating what is I mean the 17:52 you have the Poly moon, you have the mercury 7, you have the Hedra, you have the Enzo and the auto bit junior right. 17:59 Was it, were those the first first pieces in or had you done some of the 500 series that you did? Oh, we did the 500 series first. 18:06 We did kind of out of the gate I had, I had an idea for a mic preempt that would integrate pedals into your recording system. 18:17 And that's that was already kind of ready on on day one when we launched and we and we started shipping it just a few weeks after we started the company officially I think. 18:28 And then we started working pretty soon on like a 500 series DSP platform that we could bring high quality effects to the hardware recording world because they had been kind of absent for a long time 18:47 where, you know, we would go into amazing recording studios and see all these pieces of staple gear. But they were, you know, 20-30 year old TSP devices that were really limited. 18:58 They sounded good, but you know, like nothing had advanced because everything was happening in plug insurance. 19:03 So we, we decided to try, try the studio thing, pro audio. It was like new for us because, you know, we were, we were pretty focused on guitar products. 19:16 As one. Yeah, and synthesizer products, but yeah, so product pro audio was, was, was it was nice because we 19:28 we got to invest a little bit more development and, and material costs into higher quality components that you can normally put in a low cost pedal. 19:42 So we designed a super clean, super nice high end low noise system for the studio. And then we're able to migrate that down into, into, you know, lower cost pedals or, you know, 19:57 things with that don't have all of the advantages that you have in studio, like balanced XLR and, and bipolar power supplies, you know, you're kind of stuck at 9 volts in the pedal world. 20:07 So, so yeah, that was, I think it was. I don't regret starting in the studio and then going down from there at all because it just, it just 20:19 gave us a really clean platform. It was like a open space too, like you're saying, not only no one was doing reverb in 500 series and 20:27 and it's it's nice to focus just purely on, you know, delivering the highest quality audio, the highest quality algorithms, making it really focused for the studio. 20:37 It was a it was a cool place to start. Yeah, that's, that's fantastic. 20:42 And I think it, it shows like being able to start there and then bringing that down into your your smaller petals. 20:49 And I remember like the first time. Well, let me pause. 20:52 Here is how Paul and I do things when it comes to gear acquisition. You ready? 20:56 It's pretty simple. I get a whiff that something's coming out and my credit card is out. 21:01 I don't care what it is. I mean, I do there's certain companies that I don't even bother with. 21:04 But you know, when I saw I, you know, the, my, what, I guess I had taken a hiatus and play and came back and, and then you all had already come out with all of the pedals on the small version. 21:16 And so as soon as I'm like, Oh my God, I'm, I'm buying that. I'm buying that. 21:19 You know, Paul's the kind of guy that he's like, well, let me see, let me see what all it does. Let me see if I'm going to like it. 21:26 Is it going to replace what I'm already using? Like you, you try it first, download and then and then. 21:30 I'll I'll jump in. I'm the grounded one of the two of us because I think about, well, I use this in my playing, how's 21:35 it going to make my experience better? I I actually, until recently, even though we have had all of them, I just have had a Mercury 7 on my 21:43 board just because I know how to use it exactly how I want it to make the sounds I need for reverb. Yeah, cool. 21:48 I actually just recently jumped to the Mercury X because Alan did something with it that made me realize I needed it. 21:53 So. That's cool. 21:56 In a lifetime. Yeah. 21:58 But I, I think it was the Poly, it would have been the Poly moon that I got first because thanks to the DL4, like I'm a, I'm a, I'm a delay hound. 22:06 And I remembered like plugging it in and being like, Oh my God, this is the best sounding delay platform I have ever, ever heard. 22:16 Absolutely loved it Less loved like the secondary functions because I am a, my brain just could not like, wait, what was I doing? 22:25 Loved it, absolutely loved it. And I had it. 22:26 I kept it for a long time, I think until the LVX came out because then when I saw it, I saw the LVX as kind of the evolution of that into something grander. 22:35 And then when I'm like, wait a second, there's a screen I can dial in things. There's no really not really secondary and there's presets done sold. 22:43 So got that. Never looked back myself. 22:46 But so let's let's jump over to how you took. I mean, I guess the, the progression makes sense. 22:55 You, you started with the 500 series, kind of created some of the, the backbone of, of how you're doing things, jumped into the small pedals and very strategically came out with the LVX and then 23:07 then the Mercury X and then Enzo X. But I think Angela, I think you had said it a bit ago of, or maybe it was Terry, I apologize, but 23:14 wanting to start with, you know, you started with the LVX, but you always had the intention of it being a platform for multiple petals. 23:24 I don't think that was an easy task to do, especially from both a hardware and a software standpoint. 23:32 So are you, can you just give us a, a kind of like what were some of the thought process on the hardware side that let you that led you to choose kind of the way that you chose to build this 23:42 platform hardware specific? As far as the hardware, we started developing this in this platform in right at the beginning of 23:53 2020, a little bit before that maybe, but we had kind of already selected what processor we wanted to use at the time. 24:00 And this is getting into the weeds of the hardware, which is which is I'm totally comfortable up with, but, but we, we kind of, we kind of chose the fastest. 24:10 If you're, if you're looking at basically a system that can do audio processing, we chose the fastest and best fit ARM processor that was available at the time. 24:24 The newest one that you could, there was faster processors that you'd get for like a phone. But then those need to run like Linux, like an operating system that is designed to do a bunch of 24:38 different things, networking, you know, graphics and all these things that that we didn't care as much about. 24:45 We wanted to make the basically like, you know, like if, if you're thinking in terms of a race car, you design your car to do one thing. 24:55 Like we wanted to design this to do high-powered audio processing 1st and kind of everything else secondary. 25:04 The graphics became important once we, once we discover, once we had a better idea of what the UI was going to be, but but the graphics didn't end up taking a ton of resources. 25:19 So basically we write our own operating system, you know, so, so we control every, every bit of it so that the audio can be just as powerful as possible and fast and can do all the things we want to 25:37 do with it, basically. So at that time it was just, OK, what's the fastest ARM processor that we had come from using 25:44 different processors that are dedicated DSP devices. Like you've probably heard of a shark, but it wasn't advancing as fast as like the ARM family of 25:55 processors. So, so we decided to kind of jump onto that road because the, because the road map was so much, so 26:03 much more exponential. Yeah, I can, I can back up a little bit to, to, to the in the striving days, I oddly, I was one of 26:12 four engineers and I, I really didn't do much electronic hardware or, or audio, you know, software. So at that time I was more involved in the product definition and I did all the industrial design 26:30 and Gina and I would collaborate on the industrial design. So it was more like the way the product looked and the way that the product worked on timeline. 26:38 And there was a different DSP engineer. And one of the other things about starting Maris was like, oh, if I start Maris, I can work with my 26:46 favorite DSP engineer, which is Angela. So that was another big reason to start a new thing. 26:52 That's awesome. Yeah. 26:53 I was actually just going to ask the question of like division of Labor amongst you guys because it sounds like you both know a lot about both sides of the game. 27:01 It sounds like that as I mean, you guys can speak to that a bit. I wanted to hear more about that too when you're talking there. 27:06 Yeah, I 1st, I just want to acknowledge Terry. It's super flattering for him to say that he's worked with some really amazing DSP guys. 27:17 And I remember the day that Terry left on line 6, I'm like, man, I hope we can work again. I really, really was was bummed out when he was leaving, but super excited to see like what he was 27:26 going to come up with. Yeah, I, I just to echo what Terry is saying, like using the ARM platform was kind of different, 27:37 like all the other DSP based effects out there were using traditional DSPS. And so it was, you know, kind of a forward thinking thing to jump onto ARM. 27:49 And it's like Terry said that the attractive thing about it was the the growth rate, kind of the acceleration of the family. 27:59 Yeah, we work like especially, you know, on everything that's like, you know, side by side. So I do firmware coding and Terry does the hardware, but especially in the genesis of a product, 28:13 it's, you know, it's focused on the same thing and it's it's it's really kind of in service of getting the the platform up and running. 28:24 Yeah, writing our own called bare metal because you're right close to the hardware. So you're, you're, it's everything that is focused on getting the most performance out of the part 28:38 and being in control of every single little thing and not having someone else's firmware or someone else's, you know, system design like in the way of what you want to do on the part. 28:52 So it's, you know, having total control of that is super important to us. That's awesome. 29:00 Yeah, yeah. I don't know if that answered your question. 29:04 I think it I think did Paul did answer your question. Yeah, Yeah. 29:06 I mean, you asked the question about how they made the choice to get to the hardware and it sounds like the choice was let's think of the most progressive thing that's going to be growing in scalable 29:15 in a way that's not sort of stuck. Does that actually it's sort of a little off the track of talking hardware and software and DSP. 29:23 But I did have a question like kind of in I was talking with one of our friends, actually our designer who did our logo about having you guys on because he has not yet dove into Marist Petals, 29:33 but he's borrowed a couple of mine. He's like, I have a question for them actually. 29:37 So I was like, I will, what do you want to ask? And he's like, OK, so we use the analogy often that guitar pedals, since we all sort of started at 29:45 when they were sort of a fledgling thing that grew to the huge market, we have now a boutique. I use the analogy with craft beer. 29:51 A lot of, you know, you had a few and now you have the many and everybody has a New England IPA and a West Coast IPA. 29:57 And the question I had just kind of going off this, you guys clearly forward thinking, you've designed some things that have changed the way I I think about pedals and what they can do. 30:07 How do you get that creative spark in such a saturated space? And also having like the history you guys do, you've played a lot of different stuff, you've built a 30:15 lot of different things. Where do you? 30:17 Where's it come from? So we consciously, I guess one of the thing we consciously do things a certain way. 30:27 We started with an idea of, of uniting art and engineering, which was, was from an art project and A, and a like a, like an interview blog series that Gina and I did kind of in between Strayman and 30:41 and Maris, where we interviewed artists that would do electronic art and art that maybe incorporated some code or some hardware things that you couldn't do without without an engineer artist or an 30:58 engineer and an artist working together. So we wanted to with every product instead of just saying like, oh, I want to make a product that 31:09 does. I guess like at line 6, you know, you want to make them, you want to make your amp sound, you want 31:17 to make the Line 6 model sound like a Marshall Plexi or you want to make the delay model sound like a very specific memory man or something like that. 31:26 Yeah, emulation cloning. Super, yeah, we're super burned out on that idea. 31:30 So what we wanted to do was, was come up with a with an abstract concept and then apply that to a product, You know, so like, oh, we love Commodore 64 games. 31:45 We grew up with that and Nintendo games and Sega Genesis and even Sega 8 bit. So we want to make a pedal where you plug in and it sounds like that, you know, or we want to make a 31:58 pedal that makes you feel like you're in the movie Blade Runner, you know, when you, when you plug it in or so we always, we would always consciously start from a concept and then, and then turn that 32:11 into a product rather than having such a such a like a straightforward product idea. And that would kind of take you out-of-the-box of the just the music industry and like established 32:22 kind of things that are already been had been done a lot of times and try to make, try to make something more unique. 32:31 It just was, it just sounded like more fun to us, I guess, you know, we, we have the freedom to do whatever we want because we're a tiny company. 32:38 So it sounded like it sounded more fun to to approach things from that angle. Yeah, and, and there's such a wide library of things that are already available. 32:48 Like there's so many like paddles that already do the job amazing. Like the Tube Screamer does, the Tube Screamer amazing. 32:56 Like, you know, a tube driver does, you know, all these things that for us, the exciting thing is like, OK, well, what do we want? 33:04 And what, you know, what can we bring that is, is, is, you know, speaks about us personally. And kind of, it's not something that, and like Terry's saying a lot of it was a line 6, you know, 33:18 burnout. And, and I want to be careful because it was such an, it was a great experience that we're grateful 33:23 for, but it was also OK. I, I spent 13 years, you know, diving into circuits and cloning circuits. 33:33 There's so much more and I still feel like there's so much more. There's still so much to explore in the, in, in the realm of algorithms, in the realm of signal 33:42 processing, in the realm of new tools. So having, you know, just kind of the blessing of our, you know, it's our own company, just having 33:51 that opportunity to really explore like, hey, what can we bring to the table that's missing? What are things that oh, we can fill this like little gap that no one else is kind of thinking about 34:02 right now? So. 34:03 Yeah, yeah, I think that's a cool framework to the way you guys frame, like frame that out of you're not necessarily looking to achieve a specific thing. 34:11 You're sort of starting with your own personal interests and reverse engineering that into a cool sound, which I think we did when Gina was on. 34:18 We talked a little bit about like, I even like that you guys have a little sense of humor in things like when you open Predator, you have to get to the chop a little graphic going on which. 34:26 Made me very happy because. I'm a sci-fi nerd, so every single thing you guys do, I'm like, oh man, they named it. 34:31 And yeah, we, we, we went over there with Gina of even the LVX name coming out of the Isaac Asimov story. 34:36 And I didn't realize that or put it together until she said it. I was like, Oh my gosh, it's just been in front of me the whole time. 34:42 Insisting on insisting on get to the chopper in the in the app was was Gina for sure all the way. I was like, oh wait, Are you sure? 34:51 Are you sure we're a professional company here And then also let. You guys even more the. 34:56 Predator name. The Predator name started as a joke that I, I did like a silly Photoshop of the Predator holding LVX 35:06 and Mercury X and, and, and then I joked with her that we should, we should call it Predator. And she was like, OK, that's what we're calling it. 35:17 And then I said, oh, no, seriously. Like, let's call it something else, but it's fine. 35:23 It's. A nice little pan up a preset editor and then you get. 35:26 From, yeah, it's preset editor. Interesting. 35:27 It's great. It is. 35:28 It is preset editor. That's what it is. 35:30 Excuse me, I invited Gina to be a part of of the party today but she said she was too busy making Predator for Enzo X so she. 35:38 Can't she is while we speak, She's she's working on, yeah, she's working on finishing up Predator and also the the video tutorial that goes along with it. 35:49 Awesome. I just told him myself that I haven't checked our inbox at all today. 35:51 Alan and I said that's cool to know, but I want to have. Other jobs too. 35:57 Yeah, I know we're also dancing around all over the place now, but I do want to talk about the Enzo XA little bit. 36:02 So I think I'm just going through your guys lineup in my head. I think I've played with everything and had varying experiences of joy versus frustration with the 36:11 single stomp boxes just because alt functions actually a common thing. I'd love to have you guys answer a question a SEC. 36:16 Is people being scared of Mara's pedals because of alt function? I'm going to hold that up for now, but as soon as I dove into the LVX and eventually jumped in the 36:28 Mercury XI, when I started to get it and understand what was happening and the screen visualization really helped me take some of the stuff you guys had going on in the smaller stomp boxes and really 36:38 envision it in a way that didn't just expand. But you can really like the way the modules even work. 36:43 You can really make some unique sounds that are outside of delay and reverb. And then getting into the Enzo XI had actually just recently sold my original Enzo sort of knowing 36:53 this was coming just from your guys little teasers with the little graphics from the Enzo that Alan pointed out to me. 36:58 He's like, I think it's going to be an Enzo X. And I was like, I'm going to sell mine. 37:03 So I'm ready when the new one comes and I don't have like another one sitting around. And I, I loved the sounds out of the original Enzo, but I was always like, man, I can't, I wish I 37:12 could see what's happening. So when you guys announced this and I saw what it was, I was like, this is probably going to be very 37:17 cool. Alan got one, I think very quickly, so we could have one to start making videos for the channel. 37:23 Actually, here's my credit card. Just get you. 37:26 You you did say that before you couldn't even know what it was. He wasn't he wasn't he wasn't actually joking about that. 37:31 He really does do that. But especially with your guys stuff. 37:35 Oh yeah. But so in experiencing the Enzo X now, because I actually just got one recently, my own. 37:41 So we both have one, it is a little different than the other two in that it's the same form function, but it feels like it's an evolution a little bit. 37:49 I wanted to just kind of ask you guys about the process of taking something that is distinctly a guitar synth pedal, which there's others out there, you know, the boss ones even your own. 37:59 But then also it's got its own synth engine, which I really love being able to plug in a MIDI controller and build a patch. 38:04 That's really cool. What what went into the evolution of this one? 38:08 Because I do feel like it's like a a different thing. And maybe, Alan, you can contextualize it a bit more because we've talked about this a bit, but. 38:16 Well, I, I think the, the context is, you know, if you look at, as I mentioned, the LVX kind of being the evolutionary upgrade to a Poly moon, the Mercury X being that evolutionary upgrade to the 38:26 Mercury X, both of those being time based effects. They're very similar in how they how they create and there's a lot of the same bits in those 38:38 different modules that, that for me, when I got the Mercury Axe, I'm like, oh, this is just an extension of the LVX in my brain. 38:45 So it's not, I don't have to relearn everything. So I took that same mentality and assumed the Enzo X would just be that same evolutionary expansion 38:56 of the Enzo. And then I got it and I'm like, Oh dear God, this is that, but so much more. 39:01 And we're now into a territory that for me, I'm very, I mean, I'm very fledgling when it comes to synthesis. 39:08 And so I'm like, oh, oh, I just, I can't take my delay reverb knowledge and apply it to this one to one. 39:16 There's some, I mean, honestly, the best reverb and delays are like you, I know you simplified what is in the Enzo X, but on the ambience module, they're like luscious, they're perfect. 39:29 But it's very minimal in terms of that time base because there's so much emphasis on the synth side of things. 39:37 But yet you still crammed it. And I'm sorry that that sounds rough off, but you still fit that into the same UI and hardware that 39:46 you have with the LVX and Mercury X. It's a little mind blowing and I can't wrap my head around it. 39:53 Thank you for the compliments. Yeah, I think Angela shows, I think, yeah, I think Gadget chose some like the best bits and pieces 40:02 to to to add a little little spice to the to the scent that's inside of Enzo X. And your question makes a lot of sense because because the way the other piece of conceptualizing a 40:19 product that we always did in addition to you know. Coming from an abstract concept and bringing it into a product, as we always wanted to make 40:30 something its own instrument. So Enzo, the original Enzo, was the first pedal of ours that was literally an instrument. 40:40 It is a synthesizer inside that's just triggered with guitar notes or any instrument notes with pitch tracking. 40:48 So Enzo X is the evolution of that. It's literally an instrument with some extra, you know, modular modularization of, of, of modifiers 41:02 and ambient effects that you can add to your patch. But I, but I think that's the difference that you're noticing is that, you know, there there's a 41:10 beast living inside of Enzo X that that is a sound generator, you know, rather than a than a, rather than a sound modifier. 41:21 That's that's appropriate. And I think kind of what you're hinting at too is like the platform evolution from LVX, Mercury X to 41:30 Enzo X LVX and Mercury X were designed very much as modular systems because of our love of two things of modular synths and racks of just like routing and patch cables and and patch phase and 41:46 connecting everything together. So it was a natural evolution for the UI to then expand into what Enzo X is. 41:56 You know, it's, it's the modularity really was something we had from the beginning. I, I would also say that the original Enzo paddle, you get 12 controls, you get the six front panel 42:12 and the and the six alternate controls. But Enzo literally has hundreds of parameters under the hood. 42:20 And so Enzo X is a way of, of bringing those parameters to the user. So in in in the Enzo pedal, a lot of the decisions were made by us like, OK, well, we're going to 42:32 constrain it. It can't be, you know, 100 knob synth. 42:38 In a stomp. Box. 42:39 Yeah, it's a 2 button stomp box. But underneath inside there, there's tons and tons of of choices, tons of parameters. 42:49 So it it is, I can imagine turning on the Enzo X and and getting a glimpse of some of those deeper parameters that are more at home in the world of synthesizers feeling like, oh, what, what is that? 43:02 But I think that that this UI have especially the, the bubble view is a good entryway of kind of contextualizing those synthesizer parameters in the world of guitar, because ultimately they are 43:16 just, oh, it's just levels and frequencies and stuff that you do on guitar pedals anyways. So I, I hope that people, when they are experiencing Enzo X and maybe aren't coming at it from a 43:29 pure synthesis background, get, you know, kind of expand into that, you know, have, have it be almost like a learning tool where you, you're learning, going to the presets, seeing why the presets 43:42 sound the way they do, connecting that with all of these parameters and, and just kind of just being awakened to that world of, of the, of the synth world, the synthesis, their mindset of sound design. 0:00 It's a different, it's very, very related, but it's, it's a different set of tools. 43:59 And that kind of brings us back to, you know, doing something different, bringing those tools from another sound design realm and bringing it to guitar players. 44:08 I mean, that's I, I don't know that that's important to us. Like Terry said, having it be an instrument, having it be, you know, a living thing that is is, is 44:17 now expanding what you can do as a guitar player. Yeah, yeah. 44:21 And, and that was my experience. And I think like, you know, when I first, I, you know, first plugged in Zoex expecting something 44:27 very similar to LVX and Mercury X, getting that initial similar experience and then then finding the beast and then that initial, it's kind of like very first time I rode a roller coaster that went 44:40 like upside down. I was super excited. 44:43 And then you get to the, you know, you get to the Crest and you're like, holy shit. And then like you start to go, you start to go down and then all of a sudden you're like, wait, this 44:52 is as much fun as I thought it was like this is amazing. Which is which is kind of that full circle that for me with the Enzo X, like that little bit of 45:00 intimidation quickly turned to excitement as I'm like, it can do this and they can do this. I think the day that I got it, Paul, I was like on the phone with him. 45:07 Like Paul did, you know, like you don't even need to plug a guitar and you can just like put your like Midis in and like you can use. 45:13 It's a sentence, you know? Yeah, we're like little kids at recess talking about the new toy we got. 45:18 That's usually how our phone calls go. Yeah. 45:21 But I, I will say, so I actually, well, you guys were starting the LVX in 2020 as COVID hit. I so I was actually a piano player before guitar because like Angelo's experience in my family, you 45:35 had to play at least one instrument. That was like a requirement. 45:38 So I took piano lessons begrudgingly and then during COVID I got a once I got a Squire Strat, piano went out the window. 45:45 It's like, Nope, I got a guitar. Now I don't need this. 45:48 But during COVID, I actually, as I think a lot of people dove back into something they were into as a kid or maybe interested in. 45:55 I got back into playing and I specifically wanted the end to synthesizers because I'd like dabbled with MIDI controllers and played with stuff in in VST world. 46:04 And so I like went on a really crazy COVID 20/20/2022 journey of buying a bunch of different synthesizers and trying them out, trying to get different sounds. 46:12 So when you guys put this out, I was like really stoked because it's sort of the like crossroads of where I've been the last few years and I've been doing a lot of actually like soundtrack work for 46:21 short films. And so since become like your best friend. 46:24 Being able to articulate some of those things with a guitar is a really neat experience to kind of take something I know really well, which is guitar and something I'm sort of learning more and more 46:34 every year with this and being able to apply some of like subtractive synthesis to a guitar pedal. So I was really, really stoked. 46:41 I had a question off of that though, so I can tell a knowing sort of like your guys interests. Also, the Blade Runner sound of the Mercury 7 is beautiful. 46:50 I love I actually have a patch on my ASM Hydra since that I is the like void comptest sound. When I first got the Mercury Seven I was like patch it together and reverb this out. 47:01 Nice SO. Is there, are there any actually, and I know we talked about this not being what you guys do, but 47:06 are there any synth inspirations that sort of made the beast that is the engine of the Enzo X? You guys are like, I want to make some of these sounds that I love from the 70s, eighties, etcetera. 0:00 Oh yeah, there's there's a bunch. 47:16 Yeah, 100 percent, 100% are. I mean, our mentors at Line 6, the founders of Line 6, Marcus and Michelle, are Oberheim guys. 47:24 That's where they met. They met at Oberheim. 47:26 Yeah. They worked on some heavy and. 47:28 And that was a funny thing on Line 6, like, you know, was a guitar company and was very immersed in guitar culture. 47:34 But you'd have these like, legendary sense, just like in the hallways and in people's offices and like, Oh my God, this is amazing. 47:41 So Oberheim, you know, something that kind of dovetails into a Blade Runner is obviously the Yamaha CS80. 47:49 That's something like really, really close to our hearts. So yeah, all of those different platforms and different like vintage scents kind of rolled into it 48:01 that all of Dave Smith's stuff definitely pulled a little. Profit out of some of the Poly patches when I was. 48:08 Yeah, absolutely. This is cool. 48:10 Yeah, yeah. Having the different filter choices, I mean, obviously Moog, Moog is is is a is a huge, you know, 48:17 staple and inspiration. So all of those things are, you know, stuff that's from that we grew up with, stuff that, you know, 48:28 we worked with some of the principal engineers who who made the stuff way back in the day. And so it's, yeah, it's all part of our heritage and kind of our interests, 100%. 48:37 Yeah, that's super cool. And and and Angelo, we don't really tout this very much the publicly. 48:41 I don't know why, but Angelo like invented some like incredible like DSP technique techniques to to run the oscillators the way we do in the end zone. 48:53 And it's like sounds so fat. It sounds it sounds like analog, which is actually really challenging to do in DSP and I've never 49:01 heard a. Monosynth emulation sound the way it does in this one. 49:04 So that makes a lot of sense that it's something new because it's it is, it is like a real, real big oscillator sound. 49:11 Yeah, we, yeah, we, we it's all our own custom like novel everything. Our, all of our filters are our own design and our oscillators. 49:19 It's, it's important to us to like, OK, this is going to be a real sense even in the, even in the end zone. 49:24 It's important to have it, you know, it's a real oscillator. It's, you know, I, I think growing up and I love like one of the early paddles I got in it was like 49:39 the boss SYB 3 and and it's cool and it's and it's and it's very influential, but it's not real oscillators. 49:49 It's not real, you know, it's, it's, it's some of the vintage synths were, were kind of, you know, very, I'm sorry, not vintage synths, but vintage synth guitar pedals. 50:00 When it came to a guitar synth pedal, just it wasn't the, IT was close, but it wasn't exact what a a a real vintage synth should do. 50:10 So that that's that's important to us to have that kind of realism in there. Yeah, it it definitely shines through that you guys care that deep about. 50:19 I I've played quite a few of the synth pedals from different companies and I always sort of feel like they sort of sound like early MIDI to me. 50:26 Like they don't sound like a real synth, they sound like an early MIDI it version or like even to a certain point like an N64 video game soundtrack and like. 50:33 Yeah, which is cool. I mean, there's, it's cool. 50:35 I, I'm, I'm not trying to, you know, say anything disparaging about that stuff. I feel like with any pedal, any pedal in the right hands or with the right mindset can be like an 50:47 incredible, like artistic statement. So it's, it's not saying that that the old pedals were bad somehow. 50:51 It was just something that like, oh, hey, like, let's, let's make it a real sense, right? Yeah. 50:56 And you know, right. And that's, and that's why you can play it with the keyboard. 50:59 It's it's, it's like a legitimate, like real. Yeah, which is something that brought me quite a bit of joy, just like putting it on my desktop with 51:05 a tiny MIDI controller. I'm like, I'm playing with a guitar pedal that's actually a synthesizer. 51:09 I'd like told my wife I was like, come check this out. It's new, different. 51:14 Andrew, I think you speak to like you're speaking to like some of the limitations that other other pedals may have just in terms of hardware software that's in DSP, that sort of thing. 51:24 And you know, knowing that, you know, there's some, there's some reference, some heritage and reference in how you all built the Enzo X. 51:33 But it is definitely like a unique, original, original thing. And it's been it's been super, super fun. 51:42 Paul, I'm thinking about, you know, you had said something a couple episodes back about how if somebody can't get a sound out of the timeline, then they're doing something wrong. 51:51 I did say that in. Reference you. 51:54 I said you 'cause you said you can get something out of your timeline. I said you're doing something wrong. 51:57 OK, that that's right, I'm doing something wrong. But no, I, I think in bringing that full circle to this conversation, it is that like you mares has 52:07 just unlocked the potential in guitar synth world, pedal world, guitar synth pedal world that they're are virtually no limitations. 52:17 I have yet. And I'm, I am amazed that you, that you all chose an arm processor from 2019-2020 that's still here 52:26 in 2025. Like it's, I mean, it's kicking ass and taking names. 52:31 I've yet to find a limitation on what the LVX Mercury X or Enzo X can do. And I have pushed, I have pushed them to their limits. 52:40 So I mean, I always tell people like when they're asking me about any of the three of the X series, it's like, no, like start with the presets that that come factory start with. 52:52 Then you know, we do a lot of it's interesting. You, you, you created pedals that aren't, that aren't going after a specific sound, but the ability 53:03 to actually emulate so many things because of that blank canvas that you created has given us the opportunity to help new users like, well, hey, OK, well, you want that, that memory man sound and 53:14 your LVX, cool. Here's a patch that we made that you can get really close to that or you want, you know, Paul just 53:19 jumping up from the Mercury 7 to the Mercury X because I made a patch that kind of got that sound for him. 53:25 It still gives complete creativity and flexibility for a user to be 100% original because like you said, like there's AI think you said, there's a hundred different things you can change. 53:37 I think it's more, but it's like it's limitless. There's there's, there's literally no limit to what you can do, which might sound daunting, but it 53:45 really isn't because again, you go back to that EY? And it's so. 53:48 I do want to piggy, I want to piggyback off of what you were just saying, Alan and I alluded to this question and I'm going to ask one more interview style question and we'll rapid fire you guys with 53:55 our end questions here that we do with every guest. But I, I alluded to earlier people being intimidated by Marist pedals, which I actually myself was 54:04 because like they sounded great whenever I watched a video, but I was like, oh man, I don't even know what to do with some of these. 54:09 And then Alan started to shepherd me into them a bit because he's the more pioneering of the two of us. 54:14 I've, I've literally had a strieman timeline on my pedal board for the longest time because I knew exactly how to get every sound out of it. 54:21 I have all my sounds and I was like, oh man, I want to try the new thing, but I'm scared. And often you'll see on like forums people ask like, hey, I like, I want this sound And I I'm the 54:31 kind of guy who's like, well, you should try the Marist insert pedal here for what they're asking. And very frequently people are like, oh, I love how they sound, but I'm really intimidated by them. 54:39 So as the guys who designed the thing, I have my answer that I answer. I'd love to hear your guys answer too. 54:43 Hey, I really love the sound of this pedal, but I'm intimidated by it. How do you answer that if someone were to say that? 54:49 Yeah, I personally would say there's no reason to be scared at all. I think our stuff is easy to use, but I'm coming from a different perspective I guess than a lot of 54:58 people. I think our stuff is easy to use. 55:01 If you back up to, I know you mentioned alt functions and I can tell the tale of alt functions. I don't think it's ever been told before, right? 55:11 Oh oh, I like this. But but it actually started in the Striemann days. 55:17 I think that the first pedal that ever had alt functions was the Brigadier. I'm not positive about this, you know. 55:26 I know the I don't. I know the El Cap had the reverb hidden. 55:29 In it Well, yeah, but that was that was after that was after Brigadier. So basically the first, that was the first Riemann digital pedal and we came out with it and then we 55:42 wanted to add filter control. Well, there was number knobs. 55:46 So I had the, I don't know whether it's, you know, at the time I thought it was a clever idea that, that you do a secondary function by holding 2 foot switches and and you know, put the filter control 56:02 under the middle knob. I forget which knob that is right now, might be feedback or something, but then I'll cap a stand. 56:08 We, I think we had secondary functions on every knob doing it the same way and nobody complained. Nobody ever complained as far as I know. 56:19 You know I. I mean, I will say first hand experience when I got that and learned that I it felt like like an 56:25 Easter egg almost like I was like, Oh my God, like it was kind of like exciting. Yeah, it's I thought it was fun and cool too. 56:33 And. And yeah, like he said, like an Easter egg. 56:36 The one thing that I didn't like about that was because it was kind of an afterthought design decision. 56:42 Holding the 2 foot switches was kind of a pain while turning the the knobs. So when we started Maris and at first we weren't even designing pedals, you know, we were designing 56:51 500 series. I wanted, I thought, you know, OK, I need, I want more than six knobs. 57:02 So one button and then you have 12 knobs. So we decided we just, we just ran with that kind of same concept. 57:09 And then and then, but here I'm losing my train of thought a little bit, but OK, so we ran with that same kind of concept just by putting alt on one button. 57:24 And then the first petals that we implemented that on were Ottobe Junior and Mercury 7, which is a pretty simple set of alt functions. 57:32 I think once the Enzo came out, then the alt functions got a little deeper, but and, and then maybe for harder for people to remember. 57:44 And then I was like, oh man, now we went too far. Like maybe, maybe when you, you know, add a little bit too much sugar to a dish or too much salt to 57:53 a dish or something, right? But it's a really difficult design, design decision, you know, because you want to make a small 58:02 pedal and you you don't have room for 12 knobs or 20 knobs or 100 knobs like we could have put on the original lens out. 58:11 So we try to keep it. It was the best, it was the best way that we could implement a lot of knobs on a small pedal with no 58:20 screen. Also because personally, the weird thing about me is that I prefer to use pedals without screens 58:29 actually. But until we, until we came out with, you know, LVX, then that was the first kind of UI that I 58:39 enjoyed using with the screen on a, on a, on a pedal type of device. Because I, I just love the little simple bubble kind of universe planetary UI that Gina created. 58:52 It's, it's just like nice. There's a bubble. 58:55 Guy too, Alan, like myself, I love bubble. Do you like? 58:59 But yeah, that's, that's, that's the story of that's, that's the saga of the of the alt functions, yeah. 59:05 Well, you know, going back real quick, they're like, think about you said that you don't think anybody complained about the Brigadier El Cap. 59:10 But that was also like, how many years ago? And was Reddit around, you know? 59:15 That's true. I don't know. 59:16 I. Mean it was around, but I feel like it wasn't ubiquitously the place for people to like, commiserate 59:20 and complain about things like this. So we're just like the nerdiest guy you knew in your class, answering everyone else's questions on 59:28 the Internet. But I guess speaking to, I mean, I actually think our pedals are, are approachable on the surface 59:38 and then you can dive really deep. You can dive as deep or as shallow as you want. 59:43 You can get good sounds and explore. And I mean to me, I wouldn't want to limit myself with. 59:51 I understand the simplicity of or or the the attractiveness of a of a simpler tool, but I just, I just like variety, I guess. 1:00:00 And I think one of the things that even from the beginning, from the 500 series, they, they do so much and, and like Terry's right, there's a lot to explore and discover. 1:00:09 And that discovery was kind of baked into like the design. And to kind of help with that, every knob on, you know, the 500 series, the 2 button pedals and 1:00:21 extending into the, you know, the our big box series, we have a neutral position on the knob. So if you turn the filter to Max, for instance, on the auto bit junior, it really just goes away. 1:00:36 It's like the filter's not even in circuit anymore, but it does it in a way that's kind of transparent. 1:00:40 It doesn't feel. And same thing on like sample rate and decimation. 1:00:45 You can just take them out of the equation. So in that to help the exploration and to kind of the help the sound design process, we put in kind 1:00:55 of a neutral spot on every knot to kind of the knobs do let you greatly impact the sound, but then if it's too much, you can take it away completely. 1:01:07 Another thing that's important for us and that we've kept consistent throughout the 500 series, the 2 button series, and our new series of pedals. 1:01:16 I was about to say X. Series. 1:01:17 I was about to say X series because that's not something I've ever said until you brought it up, Alan. 1:01:24 So internally we call them Canyon Arrow pedals. That was our, yeah, we've, we've been calling him Canonero for the longest time. 1:01:31 I like that. And then we've we've transitioned in house to calling him Big Box. 1:01:35 But. Yeah, well, now it's going to be X. 1:01:38 OK, yeah, I'll I'll adopt your nomenclature, but on on all of those to to finish my thought. So 500 series, X series and the two button pedals, what is important to us and to kind of help the 1:01:54 process of sound design is everything is accessible on the box. Like there's no sounds that you need to attach something else to get to. 1:02:01 There's no hidden stuff that you can only unlock with like a phone app or, you know, be a MIDI that regardless of what you're using, you can and, and if you're just you alone with the paddle, with the 1:02:14 device, you can get the full range of sounds from it. Predator now makes that extremely easy. 1:02:24 But and, and it opens up the world to allowing, you know, libraries of sounds on your computer. But it was always important to US, one that, you know, you can dial things back and dial things out 1:02:38 of the picture and that you don't need if if it's if it's just you on stage, you don't need anything else to get to the full range of sounds that are available to you. 1:02:46 Yeah. I think that's a really good point because I know phone apps, I've quite a few pedals that I have 1:02:52 never used the phone app, but I know they can do it specifically not and not disparaging them, but like the UA pedals that have that. 1:03:02 I've never even thought about using the app because it's like I just want to play with the pedal. I'll just play with the pedal. 1:03:06 I mean yeah. And actually, like Terry, I, I'm not usually a screen guy. 1:03:12 The, the, the one and only screen pedal that was on my board for the longest time was the Shriman Timeline. 1:03:17 And it was just like kind of. Yeah, like you mentioned, you mentioned the Timeline. 1:03:20 Timeline's a good pedal. It's still, it's still, it's still a great pedal. 1:03:23 I mean, I I worked on the the Timeline, so did Gina. It's just that we wanted to do like a like a huge expansion of of what that can do. 1:03:37 That's that at the time that pedal did a ton, but maybe just slightly more than a deal for, you know, right, Maybe just a little bit of an advance of a deal for. 1:03:47 We wanted to break out all of the different possibilities that are within ADL 4 but but confined on a Rotary encoder and then make those all accessible at once. 1:04:00 So I, I think you guys, you guys mentioned too that you, you, you know, create presets for, you know, kind of like, like legacy, you know, effects, which is, which is cool. 1:04:14 That's like, that's like a need and that's really our stuff can do that too. But that's really just a side effect of our design. 1:04:20 You know, it's really just a side effect of us making it flexible enough to be, to be a wide palette for artists. 1:04:29 And then, you know, you can, you can, you can hone in on those sounds for sure. But it's, it's, it's just like I said, like a side effect of the of the original design intent. 1:04:38 Yeah, yeah, that actually my like journey into LVXI waited till you guys did the 10th anniversary black one because I like black petals. 1:04:45 So I was like the white one's cool, but I wanted the black 1 and I'm really glad I waited because it looks real slick. 1:04:51 And actually anytime anyone sees my pedal board, they're like, what is that one? I know they have a blue and a white pedal. 1:04:55 I was like, this is actually an LVX, but it's black. Nice. 1:04:58 Yeah, it's all for the yeah, bragging. You can cut a Gina for those. 1:05:02 Yeah, yeah. Yeah, they look really slick. 1:05:03 But my journey into LVX was built around actually taking my own presets I'd had for like 10 plus years on my timeline and just figuring out how to like I had, I was trying to learn the modules of 1:05:14 the LVX of like, OK, I have this sound I've made, it's like a dual delay. This one like does this and this one does that. 1:05:20 How do I do that in this pedal? And I spent like a good three months learning the LVX because I was like so used to not having all 1:05:27 these, all this control. And I will say to tear to Angelo's point about you don't need a MIDI controller or an app. 1:05:34 I do love that the looper is fully functional on the LVX without having to have a switch because I like the timeline. 1:05:40 You can have like a three button switch and you access all those other features to halftime reverse, which are very DL4 esque. 1:05:46 And having that just just simply the practicality of pedal board real estate of not having to cram something else on the board. 1:05:53 It's kind of nice to just I'm in the loop where I can half time, I can hold modify, I can do all the cool stuff, right? 1:05:57 Yeah, So big fan of that. Yeah. 1:06:00 And you know to tie up the the last question that Paul had about like you know accessibility with with your stuff. 1:06:07 I mean I know the two buttons have the alt overlays that people can get. So if anybody is doesn't isn't aware of that, there are alt overlays that you can put them on the 1:06:17 pedal and you basically see what what the functions are all there. So that's good. 1:06:21 That's another Gina thing too. That was actually incredibly challenging product to design. 1:06:28 Like you wouldn't think of it because it's just seems like a simple sheet, but getting the material right and getting it to, to, to stick right and not leave residue. 1:06:38 And that was like really, really difficult. I have that on my Mercury 7 and I actually it's just like part of the pedal now to me. 1:06:47 I forget that it's not there for everyone cuz it does very seamlessly work as if it was supposed to be there. 1:06:53 So kudos on. That I'll take the blame for not putting all that silk screen on the actual product too, because I 1:06:59 like minimal things and I think all of us do, all three of us do. And it just with all of the a lot of words. 1:07:08 Yeah, there's a lot, there's a lot of stuff on there. I understand. 1:07:11 It's it's it's. It's useful for sure. 1:07:14 Yeah, I will say the one that I most often forget is if I because I run both mono and stereo depending on what I'm doing. 1:07:21 OK, when I have to switch the Mercury 7 from mono to stereo, that's always I'm like, how do I do this? 1:07:26 I turn it on. I hold this. 1:07:27 That's always the one I have to go back to the manual forks. I'm like I. 1:07:30 Don't know, these are the kind of things we lose sleep over because I figured I'd bring that up hard design decisions. 1:07:39 And like Angelo said, we don't want to make someone resort to their phone or like, you know, a computer to, to be forced to do something because it just seems like, like we, I, I personally don't 1:07:53 like doing that. So you have hardware. 1:07:57 Requires software. It's sort of I think inhibits creativity in some way. 1:08:01 Yeah, because you're like part of the creative flow, like, yeah, I'm changing things. I'm here with the band and we're rehearsing and I'm changing this right now. 1:08:08 And you don't need to like go fire up a laptop or anything like that. You can if you want to and and that's available. 1:08:14 But but it's you know, it's in it's to keep you in the moment is to have everything available. Yeah, I actually have a synthesizer that's Sequencer requires you to have the software to change the 1:08:24 tap division of your sequencer. And when I learned that, I was like, Oh my gosh, I. 1:08:29 Need this, yeah. There's no button to switch it. 1:08:32 Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I think that was a really great answer and I, I do agree after initially myself being 1:08:38 intimidated, I think you guys have once you sort of get it, you get it. And it's also, I mean something I've told people when I've I've been asked this question like how do 1:08:47 you play their pedals? They're so confusing and intimidating is you also don't need to use all the functions to get good 1:08:53 sounds out of the pedal. I have pedals that I actually literally use one setting on it. 1:08:57 Not your like I have a few chorus pedals where it's like I got my chorus sound and I literally have never touched any of the secondary functions because I know what it does and it does it great so. 1:09:08 I love, I love that you guys have just basically unlocked the what the pedals can do for the user to decide. 1:09:15 You know, we had just did an interview last week with another Socal guy who has a pedal coming out that it's, it's, it's it's Evan from OC Pedal Co, but he's got a distortion pedal coming out that he 1:09:27 selected What which gain setting is going to be on this? Yeah, there's no gain knob. 1:09:31 Which in some ways is cool because then it's like, hey, this is where it's going to sound great, but it's the opposite of what you guys have done with with your products. 1:09:38 And you've basically unlocked everything so that us, the users can determine what we want and find and find that, which is great. 1:09:48 So. Yeah, I guess, I guess we, we give you the full, the full kitchen experience, you know, all the 1:09:53 ingredients and there's yeah, and, and, and there's, there's value in, in, in, in, in both ways. I, I think I think like LVX or Mercury X or Enzo X is kind of best of both worlds because, because 1:10:09 you have all of that stuff available, but then you have, you know, presets. So yeah. 1:10:15 Absolutely. I actually will share my one anecdote about that and then we're going to end the the final three 1:10:20 questions here. But I, I had a hard time adopting to LVX because I was originally just using Alan's presets because 1:10:26 he had it for like months before me. And I discovered that actually the biggest difference in the way we both approach. 1:10:31 So I'm, I always say this on different episodes, like tone is mostly in your hands and you have different hands and every other human on earth. 1:10:38 And so Alan's filters, he always had a filter module on the LVX that when I would play it, I was like, this does not sound like when Alan plays and like, I cannot get this delayed. 1:10:46 So the first thing I did once I discovered that was I actually just turned off until I was needing it, the filter module on every single preset because I was like, yeah, yes, because I was like, I 1:10:55 just need to get the base delay sound and then I'm going to figure out where I need it to be. It's just a learning curve for me of like, oh, I have everything. 1:11:02 I don't need to have every module turned on every time to get a sound out of it. I can then figure it out from there is one of my aha moments in exploring the LVX. 1:11:10 And now that I get that, I'm like OK, now I can get anything I want out of it and I don't have to just have Alan's hands on it. 1:11:17 These. Glorious hands. 1:11:20 It's a huge part of it. I mean, yeah, different guitars, different amps, different, yeah, absolutely different player. 1:11:26 It's yeah. All of these things add up. 1:11:28 And you guys have enough control to kind of accommodate all those different things, whether you have big sausage fingers like I joke with, but our dainty little piano player surge in hands. 1:11:38 But all right, so rapid fire around. These are not hard questions. 1:11:42 They are back to the basics of the beginning where we talked about you guys getting into guitar playing. 1:11:47 That's really what this is about. So I think we'll just go. 1:11:51 You guys can just go back and forth answering. We'll just ask these questions. 1:11:54 So I'll start out when you go. So your first guitar pedal on your journey, What was it? 1:12:02 My first I mentioned before the that I got to borrow from my uncle, Cool Uncle Dave let me borrow the the crybaby Wah and the ADA Flandra at the same time. 1:12:16 And I loved, I loved those. I still I think the ADA Flandra's still my favorite Flandra. 1:12:24 That's a pretty good one. I feel like Flandra's something that should be explored. 1:12:27 You guys should make a flandra. Anyhow, continue. 1:12:29 We do. Well, you have there is one. 1:12:31 There's one in each one. There's a module for it. 1:12:33 Yes. Yeah, this is different in each one. 1:12:35 Yeah, the Enzo X has a cool. I I did a lot of work on the the flanger for Enzo X. 1:12:41 It's it's pretty capable. It does a lot of interesting stuff. 1:12:44 My first, my first pedal was a little Aryan distortion pedal. It had a little red, you know, main Japan and Max Aryan. 1:12:55 I can't even remember the name of it, but it was their. Their red distortion was the first first I'm. 1:12:59 Definitely going to deep dive that for. Reference I was playing through my dad's, I had my I had a Japanese Squire and I was playing through 1:13:05 my dad's accordion amp, his Maiden Milwaukee floated tone accordion amp. And so I couldn't push it. 1:13:14 And no matter how hard I play it, I just couldn't turn it up all the way. Just could not get the thing to clip. 1:13:18 So, so that was the first thing was like, oh, I'll just buy a distortion pedal. I didn't know anything. 1:13:24 And yeah, I got that Arian ostortion. Fantastic. 1:13:27 Next question, what is your current favorite pedal? It can be yours too. 1:13:34 You don't have to. It can be a Maris product, that's fine too. 1:13:39 Oh yeah? Well, I'll say my pedal board right now is just LVX and then Moss Tortion clone from Nord from 1:13:48 Nordland. Oh yeah, yeah. 1:13:50 Yeah, I forget the exact model number of it, but it's just an OverDrive and an LBX and that's, that's like my rig right now just for just for playing with the man. 1:14:01 It's it's enough for me, Yeah. Is it the Mt 11? 1:14:05 Yeah, that's it, Mt 11 and it sounds awesome and I it's an it's an Ibanez Moss torsion pretty, pretty faithful clone. 1:14:14 I think I never owned one of those as a kid. I remember seeing them and yeah, sounds good. 1:14:20 And I just run it into like a J CM800 or I just got an amp from Alex from Science Amps and that amp sounds awesome. 1:14:31 Yeah. And a lot of bands that I like, their rigs are pretty simple and I use a lot more. 1:14:41 You know, I use a lot of delay normally but if I'm in more the studio setting then I'll use a reverb, but usually live with the band is just delay. 1:14:50 Nice. I do also say often the more I play and the more pedals I try, the less I actually need to write 1:14:57 music. It's something I've discovered. 1:14:59 I'm like I have all these things I just only need like delay a drive and maybe like something modulationy in between there. 1:15:08 You're too practical though, Paul. There's a lot of fun of having just like a lot of pedals. 1:15:12 Too I have. So many. 1:15:13 Right. It's not about needs, it's about wants and desires. 1:15:16 See. Terry gets it. 1:15:18 Paul, what about you, Angelo? What's? 1:15:23 Yeah, so my, my home rig, I have a, a pair of Fender Deluxes that I run in stereo and I have our stuff in stereo and then for but distortion for drive. 1:15:36 Like I'm a big Alan Holdsworth fan, also big Zappa fan. And the distortion that I, I tend to gravitate towards is the combination of compression and 1:15:49 distortion. And so I, I always have, you know, a compressor on, you know, pushing. 1:15:56 And I've had on my board for the longest time. We're we're really good friends with another X line Sixer, George Tripps. 1:16:04 He has a the way huge fat sandwich and pushing that with compression makes it sound completely different. 1:16:11 It feels like a completely different paddle. And so, so that's kind of like like a core tone, I guess with the Deluxe is, and I have it in a 1:16:22 switching rig so I can turn it on and off and, you know, just go straight to the deluxe is yeah, way huge. 1:16:27 Yeah, Yes, actually. Funny that you bring up way huge cuz I have been, I've been a way huge fan for as long as I think 1:16:33 they've been around. Yeah, actually I only got down like 19. 90. 1:16:38 Two or something like that, or. I've had like every one of their pedals at some point in time so. 1:16:42 Like, wow, yeah. I don't have them all currently cuz you know. 1:16:46 Paul, did you say that you're a way, huge, way huge fan? Nice dude. 1:16:51 My favorite my favorite way huge is on the Geisha drive. Yeah, it's a good one. 1:16:55 It's a really good one. They're they're really cool pedals and they I think actually in the tube amp or I feel like all of 1:17:01 the drive and fuzz stuff they have pushes a tube amp just like perfectly. It just is like does it right and I. 1:17:06 Yeah, he, George obsesses over that. Yeah. 1:17:09 He's a really good friend and really generous guy. And I'll, I'll visit him from time to time in his lab in Burbank, and he's always trying out 1:17:19 different transistors and trying out different gain stages and awesome. He's very meticulous about it. 1:17:25 Yeah. So he makes good stuff. 1:17:27 Yeah, George is a guy with good taste, so everything he does. Absolutely. 1:17:30 Yeah. Good. 1:17:31 We just got the tradies. Oh, nice, right. 1:17:35 Yeah. I got that. 1:17:36 Well, Paul said he wanted to get it and I, you know me credit card. All right, here we go. 1:17:40 I specifically wanted to get it to see if we could model some of it on the Enzo X actually. Yeah. 1:17:44 That's like that's kind of our, just for context for you guys. Like we will like play around with stuff. 1:17:50 I'm like, can we do this on any of the Marist stuff? Let's see if this pedal can. 1:17:53 Sometimes it's actually really, sometimes there are pedals that are so far afield it's like even if I use every module, I can't quite get it. 1:18:00 And sometimes it gets close enough for government work. So. 1:18:06 But yeah, the tradies was actually just a recent Enzo X like, let's try that. Some really fun one, yeah. 1:18:11 That one's a wild one. That one's got some wild choices in there. 1:18:14 It's really, really gnarly, petal. Also, Dune naming convention speaks to me no matter what, so. 1:18:20 Huge. Yeah, yeah. 1:18:23 All right, last question. And I feel like we've touched on this throughout and we usually do when we have these conversations 1:18:28 because it's fun to just talk about gear and music with people. But who inspires you to try new gear? 1:18:34 Is it an artist? Is it another builder? 1:18:37 What when you guys are like, I want to try a new thing? And I also always usually put the disclaimer of we're all subject to social media marketing or 1:18:44 marketing in general nowadays. So it could be an influencer if that is the answer as well. 1:18:52 For me, it's it's like it's usually artists. I I, you know, grew up loving Andy Summers, so I always was just dying to know what he used. 1:19:02 And then there's like recently that one of my favorite, one of my favorite metal guitarists. I was kind of I was, I was doing the deep dive into what is rig was in the 90s and I like I was 1:19:19 trying to to replicate that. Bill Steer was is that guitarist and yeah, yeah, I I think for me it's that but it's but that's more 1:19:32 from from growing up and being influenced by people. Now. 1:19:36 It's more like I I'm in this world where where we're creating our own stuff. So I it's hard to kind of take myself out of that perspective. 1:19:45 Yeah, that's fair. Yeah, it's you know what's nice is Terry and I go to a lot of these different events they're pedal 1:19:54 and since shows and sometimes it's fun to cross pollinate and kind of run across just different things that are out there and kind of get inspiration. 1:20:03 This company is at Melbourne Synth. Yeah, yeah, they just make some really wild like. 1:20:10 Motorized encoder, user interface stuff and so I think a lot of times when I'm checking out something new, it's kind of like direct exposure because of these events we go to in New York and 1:20:21 all over the place and we're. Friends with a lot of different pedal companies too. 1:20:24 So yeah, yeah, we trade back and forth, 100% trade each other stuff. Absolutely, yeah. 1:20:31 It's the best, yeah. I do like in the boutique pedal community that everybody's kind of like homies and shares, and 1:20:38 you'll see, like, a Chase Bliss pop pop up somewhere and it's like, oh, look, they're friends. Like, I know you guys I think had something in the mystery boxes that weren't. 1:20:46 Yeah. An insane undertaking at the holidays. 1:20:49 Yeah. So. 1:20:50 That was really cool. Yeah, it was Otto, but juniors, Yeah. 1:20:53 Yes, yeah. No, that's and and and CXM 1978 OK as well. 1:20:58 Too PCXM. Yeah, that's awesome. 1:21:00 Oh yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, actually I as far as artists, I shared this one. 1:21:04 I think I mentioned this one Gina was on, but I can't remember. It was in the episode of we because we also ended up talking afterwards for quite a bit because we 1:21:10 just got nerdily into like sci-fi things and books and then artists. And I actually first came across you guys through Nick Reinhart. 1:21:20 OK, cool. Yeah. 1:21:22 Who I grew up really enjoying his sound and listening to his music as a kid from the East Coast being like, man, this stuff is like different. 1:21:29 Yeah. And so. 1:21:29 Actually the video he did on the auto bit junior I actually like bought 1 like immediately afterwards because I was nice. 1:21:35 OK, well this is a cool weird thing. Yeah, Nick, it's cool that we. 1:21:40 It's cool that we know Nick now because I was a fan of the music first and then I when we were first, only when we were still in LA and our office was in Van Nuys, I invited him over just because 1:21:55 I liked his music. I loved it. 1:21:57 First time I heard Tara Mellos, it was like, you know, one of those things that changes your, changes your brain because you've never heard anybody play like that before. 1:22:04 Nope. And also. 1:22:06 Talk about a rig that's the opposite of our minimalist ones. Yeah, I mean, and, and he uses all those like, like every pedal is like important for a certain a 1:22:14 certain part of the song. And yeah. 1:22:16 And then I invited him over, we had lunch and then kind of just became friends from there. So that's. 1:22:21 That's really. Really cool. 1:22:22 Yeah. That's awesome. 1:22:23 Yeah. Well, gents, thank you so much for hanging out with us for quite a while. 1:22:28 I really appreciate it. I feel like if I don't, if one of us doesn't stop it, it's just going to keep going. 1:22:32 Yes. 'Cause I have like when I keep talking about other stuff now, but. 1:22:37 And I know we're early in the cycle, but so I won't ask you what's coming next. I won't do it. 1:22:44 But I will say that if it's auto bit senior, you can deviate from the X series and and use senior. Just saying just. 1:22:52 Well, I also want to say if you guys do that, the have being able to control the auto bit more and be able to visualize the sequencer would be my dream because metal is awesome and I'm always like, 1:23:02 man, I wish I knew what I just did. Yeah. 1:23:07 So auto bit senior is kind of in my heart, already taken by the auto bit 500 series module. I feel, yeah, I feel like the junior is the nomenclature is that way. 1:23:15 So it has to be. It has to be. 1:23:17 We did. We did that because of, you know, like like Pac-Man Junior and stuff like. 1:23:21 That yeah, yeah, donkey. Junior. 1:23:24 Yeah, Perfect. Is there a Pac-Man Junior or just Miss Pac-Man? 1:23:28 There's Missus, there's Miss PAC. Man, that's what I was thinking about. 1:23:31 Yeah, Donkey Kong Junior yeah, yeah, no, I, I actually that I I got around the same time the auto bit junior and then the the teenage engineering, the arcade pocket operator, which is like similarly 1:23:42 vibed and running that those little things are cool because they sound huge when you plug it into the actual setup. 1:23:48 And I was in I was in just bit crushed video game and I've been making all sorts of little noises and fun making loops with it and just like destroying it. 1:23:57 It was really fun so. Yeah, it's really good for percussion sounds too. 1:24:00 Yeah. Yeah, running a drums drum machine through it is super, super fun. 1:24:05 Yeah, so. Well, again, Terry Angelo of Maris, thank you so much and for being here, but mostly thank you for 1:24:12 the ingenuity and creativity that you've brought to our world as as effects people and just thank you. 1:24:20 I mean, it seems simple to say, but I, I, I'm, I have gratitude for what you all have done and it's opened up a lot for me and I know other people as well. 1:24:29 So thank you very much. Yes. 1:24:32 Thank you, guys. Yeah, we appreciate you having us on here. 100% yeah, no, yeah. 1:24:35 Thanks for the love. It's and thanks for just just showing people all the different capabilities. 1:24:42 So yeah, yeah, we really appreciate it. Absolutely. 1:24:45 Anytime. All right, everybody, We'll talk to you next week. 1:24:48 Bye. See. 1:25:00 You.