Can you tell us a little bit about your
new generation products?
I worked two years on the new generation of my switchers. My main goal for
developing these new switchers is easy;
I wanted to develop the best switchers
ever. The new design of the switchers
was developed by two young and very
talented industrial designers, Busse and
Medugorac. I designed the first generation, but my main work is engineering,
so I decided to let these two guys do the
design work for the new generation of
switchers. I think this was a good decision
because I’m pretty sure we will hear their
names again in the future – they did a
really fantastic job.
From a technical point of view, the first
version of my D-Loop, with its programmable and MIDI functions was the first product in the new direction of my switchers.
Besides some new helpful features, like
the tuner-out of the Dual SGoS or the controllable buffer stage of the new D-Loop,
the main difference between the first and
second generation is the network ability.
A lot of customers asked me for bigger
solutions for more than two amps or two
loops. Building bigger switchers with more
loops would be one way to go, but I think
it’s much better to connect the loopers to
build a complex switching matrix.
For example, you start with two effects
chains connected to two loops with the
D-Loop SGoS. You can change the loops
or bypass all the loops with only one step.
When you need additional loops because
of more effects or changing effects combinations, you can keep your old one and
use an additional D-Loop SGoS connected
to the first one with a standard stereo
patch cable to build a network. Now, when
you step on one switcher, the other one
will follow, while all the possible combinations are freely programmable – you can
even connect a third switcher. The main
idea behind this new concept is switching
everything with a single step. The complete communication is realized using the
MIDI program change standard, so you can
also connect the switchers to any other
MIDI device.
Lehle has an impressive roster of users
– guitarists like Peter Stroud and Carl
Verheyen. Have any artists helped develop Lehle products? What is the design
process for a new pedal?
All Lehle products are based on customer
requests. Most of the requests are coming from less popular musicians, but I treat
them the same as if they were famous
rockstars. When several musicians are
longing for the same product, and it fits
my product line, I will release it. There are
also well known artists like Carl Verheyen
who helped to develop a product with
