5 Boutique Stompbox Builders You Should Know
the best and most essential parts of the
guitar-amplifier tone equation.
“The initial idea was to make a preamplifier
circuit where the undistorted component of
the sound has a flat response, but where the
distorted component has reduced high frequencies. The overall effect of this is to make
the sound spectrum of the distortion similar
to the guitar sound. I think it has always been
popular because guitarists find that their tone
doesn’t radically change when they switch
in the Hot Cake. It also handles chords quite
well and has low self-generated noise.”
As the slow expansion of Crowther’s product line illustrates, he pursues a new design
only when he’s interested or perceives
an opportunity to fill a hole that other
stompbox makers haven’t. Such are the
origins of the Prunes & Custard, a harmonic
generator-intermodulator (many mistake it
for an envelope filer) that has found many
fans among bass players and adventurous
guitarists like Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy.
“I wanted to make something that didn’t just
clip the waveform, but was more interesting,” says Crowther. “With the P&C, which
I first made in 1994, the waveform doubles
back on itself, amplitude-wise, a few times. I
have since heard about a synthesizer module
called a wave multiplier, which does something similar—although I did come up with
the P&C circuit quite independently.”
More recently, Crowther introduced the
Double Hot Cake to address the needs of
players that use multiple overdrives to expand
their tone palette onstage—particularly those
using two Hot Cakes. In typical Crowther
fashion, however, the Double Hot Cake adds
dimension that a simple two-overdrive setup
could not. “I finally came up with the idea
of an arrangement where, when both Hot
Cakes were switched on, Hot Cake A would
drive Hot Cake B, but Hot Cake A’s controls
would have no effect, and A’s Drive would be
controlled by an extra Drive pot. I also added
an extra clipping stage in between A and B, so
that it goes a little bit into fuzz world and adds
an extra mid boost. Hotcake A is the slightly
less edgy ‘bluesberry’ version, while B is the
normal old circuit.”
Crowther Audio’s Paul Crowther is one of the godfathers of the boutique stompbox movement. He built his first Hot Cake overdrive in 1976, when
he was the drummer for Split Enz. The design is still considered a classic.
Like any good engineer (or drummer, for
that matter), Crowther doesn’t come off as
sentimental about a so-called Golden Age
of stompboxes. He likes what works, what’s
useful, and what makes more interesting
music. He does, however, see good analog
circuits as a ticket to achieving a more musical signal chain. “There is something rather appealing about a fuzz circuit that uses
germanium transistors. And there is also
something quite subtle in the nonlinearity of
a tube that makes for a less clinical sound.
I believe it produces a very subtle intermodulation distortion that can help bring the
sound of an electronic instrument to life.”
One also gets the feeling that Crowther
may have a few surprises up is sleeve yet. “I
did try to make an electronic Leslie in 1973.
It was not too successful, but it sure made
for an interesting tremolo. There could be
something there. And there are a few other
ideas spinning around in my head.”
crowtheraudio.net
98 PREMIER GUITAR NOVEMBER 2010
www.premierguitar.com
