PROFILE
to the one that Larry Carlton uses with
his Dumble—the 1x12” ported, Thiele
cabinet. I built some cabinets and took
them to local stores. All of a sudden they
were asking for a 2 x12” or a 2x10”, so I
designed whole bunch.
You have a new tube pedal.
The Nu-Valve is an extension of the
Zendrive 2, in a sense. Coming back to
compact design, I looked for tubes that
were very small that would do the job. I
found the Nuvistor tubes. The problem is
that they are single triode tubes, so if I
want two triodes I have to use two tubes.
Yes, they fit where the battery usually
goes. The idea is to bring some tube
response into play with the rest of the circuit. They don’t manufacture those tubes
any more, so for many years I bought
them and their sockets. I have plenty of
them, for support and maintenance, but
there will be a limited number of pedals.
Is the Nu-Valve’s British sound a func-
tion of those tubes?
People that listened to it said that in certain settings it sounded British, so that
is where the idea came from. The Voice
knob acts differently with the tubes. It is
not as drastic a change as the Zendrive,
but it can add a British voice into it.
What made you develop a reverb
pedal after exclusively doing
overdrives and distortions?
That came from an amp manufacturer
friend of mine who needed a reverb for
a big customer. I used a Belton reverb
module. It’s a circuit encased in epoxy—
they call it the “brick.” It has pins that
connect to the rest of the circuitry. You
have to design around it—the module
only does reverb, you have to massage
the signal going in and coming out, and
blend it with the original sound.
I notice that the only parameter
adjustment is mix. The decay and
such are not adjustable.
It is all fixed already. It’s a different
approach to what other people are doing.
You can get the module in short, medium,
and long decay. We used the medium. I
wanted to make it as inexpensive as possible. The person I designed it for and
the customer told me, “This sounds great.
You need to put this in a pedal.” So I
decided to do it.
Is it a digital circuit?
