5 Boutique Stompbox Builders You Should Know
set of problems that existed in analog circuits,” says Burton.
“When we developed the Brigadier Delay,
we knew that the nicer, high-voltage analog
bucket-brigade chips were nearly impos-
sible to get and that all analog delays
suffered from certain problems like poor
signal-to-noise ratios, distortion, and limited
headroom. Of course, these ‘problems’ are
part of what make analog delays cool,”
Burton admits. “So we implemented dis-
crete bucket brigade stages in DSP and
added a control for ‘bucket loss.’ That
single control lets you have a cleaner ana-
log delay than has ever existed before or a
very dirty and noisy one. With El Capistan,
the goal was to capture all of the electrical
and mechanical nuances that make classic
tape delays sound the way they do—and
put that technology in a small form factor
without the maintenance nightmares that
plague traditional tape delays.”
Burton and his team understand why play-
ers treasure analog sounds. But unlike many
players who have chosen sides along the
digital-analog divide, Burton sees digital
as a way to look backward and forward
simultaneously. “I think the analog fixation
that many players have is not unfounded,”
Burton says. “And there certainly have
been many digital products released over
the years that have failed to deliver the
goods. We are keenly aware of this when
undertaking our DSP designs. But if we’re
successful in achieving our design goals,
the technology becomes irrelevant. What
we know and love is making hardware, and
we want our hardware to be not only great
sounding, but also fun and satisfying to use.
Traditionalist or not, if someone sits down
in front of a pedal and that pedal inspires
them musically, then it’s a successful design.
My hope is that we’re always using the
authentic sounds as a foundation and build-
ing from there. In addition to making things
that conjure the days of old, we also want
to create sounds that haven’t even existed
before. And, we’ve got lots of projects
cooking in our labs.”
strymon.net
Clockwise from top: Strymon’s analog engineer, Gregg Stock, explores old-school ways with a heavily modified, Floyd Rose-equipped Gibson Explorer; Strymon founder Terry Burton with an SG and a Brigadier delay (foreground); Pete Celi brainstorms DSP algorithms that generate analog sounds.
90 PREMIER GUITAR NOVEMBER 2010
www.premierguitar.com
