drummer—because I couldn’t quite lock
in using the knob. Now the Bass Envelope
Filter Pro has a preset switch that can be
changed into a tap tempo.”
Guitarists are coming around as well.
“Bass players are maybe talking to their
guitar players,” posits McAlack. “The
Multiwave Distortion is doing better and
better. Session guitarist Pete Thorn’s terrific
video explained how it is a useful studio
tool when you need a melodic line that
sounds completely different. Pete had used
it on his last record, and he highlighted
what’s great about that pedal. The EQ
pedal is selling very well, also.”
“One of the reasons players shied away
from digital before is that you didn’t have
as much control as with analog,” adds
Cady. “Now you have the control to get
those in-between quirks that you get from
analog effects.”
DragonForce’s Herman Li is another big
name who’s helped raise the Hot Hand’s
profile among guitarists. However, before
his and others’ enthusiasm had helped
spur a recent surge in sales, orders to the
overseas manufacturers of the Hot Hand
had temporarily slowed to the point that
the factory had destroyed the molds. Since
they had to be manufactured again from
scratch, Source Audio decided it would be
a great time for a redesign.
“The ring will look the same,” says
Remignanti, “but we added a third [param-
eter] axis to give you more options. The
biggest difference is the receiver. It will no
longer plug into the back of the pedal [the
old ones will still work—everything is back-
ward compatible]. It will now be a separate
module that connects by cable. It will give
you the ability to tweak some parameters
right on the module, like depth and filter-
ing—similar to the Source Audio MIDI-
EXP pedal. It will also have an expression
output, so you can use the Hot Hand with
third-party pedals.”
For those who want to control effect
parameters in real-time in a more tradition-
al manner than the Hot Hand, the original
Source Audio pedals and the Soundblox Pro
series offer inputs for any standard expres-
sion pedal. The Soundblox and Soundblox
2 series work with the company’s own
model, which uses a pair of TRS expres-
sion outputs to control two effects units
simultaneously. Unique to this pedal is a
special Sensor Output that connects directly
Will Cady is a jack of all trades for Source Audio, handling bass prod- uct line management, marketing, shipping, and customer relations.
to any Source Audio Hot Hand input,
allowing real-time foot control over filter
sweeps, effect modulation, LFO speeds,
wet/dry mixes, drive levels, etc. “You can
use the expression pedal to control many of
the parameters, and you can daisy-chain a
number of Source Audio pedals so you can
use one expression pedal for all of them,”
says Remignanti. “With the advent of the
Source Audio MIDI interface, you will also
be able to run MIDI through the expression pedal port and daisy-chain it so you
can set up scenes with a MIDI controller.”
In It for the Long Haul
It has been a long, slow climb for the team
at Source Audio, but a stream of innovative
ideas and quality execution seems to be
leading to a bright future. “Sometimes, [for
a pedal to be accepted] all it takes it one
person doing something really cool with
it,” say Remignanti. “Eventually, you can
win over the more traditional guys, but you
have to be around long enough that they
realize you are not another pedal company
that is here today, gone tomorrow.”
With a new generation of guitarists and
bassists who’ve grown up perfectly at home
with smartphones, deep recording software,
and a broader range of musical tastes than
ever before, it’s a safe bet that Source Audio
will find a spot on many of their pedal-
boards and be a company to watch as the
future of effects pedals unfolds.
