Left to right: The Keeley 4-Knob Compressor has sold more than 27,000 units since 2001. The Fuzz Head is a germanium fuzz with modern gain
stages. And the Luna Overdrive features an ultra-flexible EQ section.
and then putting tick marks in each col-
umn. One mark for bad phasers, etc., and
that gave me the exact road map to then
develop all of our mods.”
Keeley’s TS9 mod—one of his most
popular—has been used by Peter Frampton,
Jon Herington of Steely Dan, and former
Frank Zappa sideman Ike Willis, to name a
few. He starts by first changing the circuit
to a Texas Instruments RC4558P. Then he
changes the output resistors to metal-film
ones rather than carbon-comp resistors,
which add unwanted noise. This results in
better bass response, a greater range of over-
drive, and the ability to achieve a cleaner
sound by turning down.
His process for developing mods naturally led him to working on kits for big-name
brands. To this day, he simply watches
what’s selling unless a player commissions
him for a specific project. “There weren’t
many people doing modifications to a variety of popular Boss and Ibanez pedals—at
least not doing them en masse,” Keeley says.
“I essentially became a dealer for Boss and
Ibanez, so I could get them at a good price.
Then I quickly got them to people like
Steve Vai, Joe Satriani, and John Mayer—
when he was still a little kid—and all the
““The projects I did in college that were
guitar-related were all based on stuff that
hadn’t changed since the ’80s, so I had to
use microprocessors to control ancient
technologies.” —Robert Keeley
country guys, too. Like Brad Paisley. I heard
their complaints and solved the problems
they were having with the units.”
A few days before being interviewed for
this article, Keeley was working on a mod
of the popular MXR Phase 90 for Steely
Dan’s Donald Fagen. He laughs, because he
was copying a design from 1974, but tech-
nology has come so far since. “The tech-
nology these days is just really incredible,”
he says. “The projects I did in college that
were guitar-related were all based on stuff
that hadn’t changed since the ’80s, so I had
to use microprocessors to control ancient
technologies. There was nothing really new
to experiment with. People who were mak-
ing ICs were keeping them to themselves.”
He admits that, due to these technological
advances, building and modifying effects
has become much easier than he imagined
it would be when he was in school. On one
hand, this reality makes his job easier, but
on the other it was also enough to spawn
an entire industry of copycats.
Adjusting to the Competition
Somewhere tucked away in Keeley’s closet
is a T-shirt that reads, “Keeley, the House of
Blue Lights.” It was a gift from a customer,
referencing the blue LEDs that had become
his trademark. At the time, no effects
manufacturer was using blue LEDs—which
is part of the reason he chose to do so in
the first place. Today, blue LEDs are more
common than he’d like. Keeley says he
went from having almost no competitors
to hundreds—people who apply his concepts and even his name to mods they hock
online. He warns unsuspecting eBay users
to beware. “College students,” he says, “are
