Burhard G Lehle, the man
behind the switchers
The brightly colored boxes with the mush-room-shaped footswitches popped onto
the scene a while back, offering up Teutonic
quality and innovation
along with a difficult
to pronounce name.
Having scored U.S.
distribution last year
with Dana B. Goods,
Lehle-branded boxes
(pronounced lee-la)
have found their way
onto quite a few
1 3 SGoS
pedalboards stateside
in a short amount of
time, many of which
belong to artists notorious for their search for
the ultimate tone. Figuring these guitarists
were onto something, our own intrepid Dirk
Wacker tracked down Burkhard G. Lehle to
ask, “Dude, what’s up with those switches?”
How did you end up specializing in
switching solutions?
It all started one day when a customer
came into my shop and asked for a special switching solution. I’m always open-minded to new things, so I started to
investigate and I soon realized that there
were no practical solutions. Due to the
void in the market, I built two prototypes
and showed them to some exhibitors at
the Musikmesse in Frankfurt, Germany.
When I returned home, I
had several orders for my
switcher. My first prototypes were built into the
standard Hammond die
cast cases, using standard
mechanical switches. As
demand increased, I developed my first generation
of switchers in 2001. These
switchers had the bigger,
mushroom-shaped knobs
and the indestructible switching matrix. These raised a lot
of international interest; that’s
how it all started.
What sets your switchers apart?
The special thing about my
switchers is the design and
the exclusive use of relays
and switches with gold-plated contacts.
My pride and joy is the Hi-Z transformer
that I developed, which is used in the Dual
SGoS, Little Dual and the P-Split. I really
believe that it’s important to keep the
Dual SGoS
individual interaction of the guitar, amp,
playing style and the cable alive, even
when you need to switch. The signal that
comes out of a typical guitar or bass is so
weak that a crappy cable or cheap contact
materials can noticeably ruin your tone.
To switch such weak signals without any
tone loss, you need very special contact
materials and a special design. Nothing
beats gold-plated contacts for switches
and relays. This is the only guaranteed
way for switching weak signals without any
degeneration.
In general, my
switchers are
passive, without
any semiconductors in the signal
path. The sound
of a guitar and
bass is created
by the interaction
between the weak
instrument signal
and the amp’s
sensitive input stage. With an active buffer,
you can dramatically change the sound and
feel of a guitar. Buffers and other active
elements can be very useful and sound
good, but in my opinion, they should not
