Barber Electronics forum.

Hey Dave,

When you design pedals, do you design them with a certain guitar or amp in mind? I know some pedal designers do this, and some pedals play nicer with single coils than HB's and vice versa or some meld with marshall amps better than Fenders. I would love to hear your views on this or even what pedals you designed with certain amps or guitars in mind!!!

rrwelden wrote:Hey Dave,

When you design pedals, do you design them with a certain guitar or amp in mind? I know some pedal designers do this, and some pedals play nicer with single coils than HB's and vice versa or some meld with marshall amps better than Fenders. I would love to hear your views on this or even what pedals you designed with certain amps or guitars in mind!!!

I usually have a good mix of guitars and amps. Guitars include price range from $250-$3000, amps from $100-$2500. Pickups range from vintage output single coils to hot humbuckers. I try to make pedals that work well with all ranges of balanced sounding guitars. If a guitar is especially bright or very muddy it might fall out of the range of design work. I should note I do not consider the average Tele an "especially bright" guitar, I even use a Classic Vibe Tele for my $250 sound. I resist over customizing my guitars so they will best represent what an average guitar product buyer may own and use on the bandstand (living-room).

Amp I use are Vox AC15c1, brown Fender Deluxe reverb reissue with an alnico speaker (stock), Marshall Class-5, Barber Echelon, Barber 15-30 watt prototype, Crate power-block, Clark Beaufort special and Phil Jones Briefcase bass amp. I use the normal channel on the Deluxe, I have removed some bright caps from the AC15c1, Class 5 is stock, The Barber amps cover a very wide range of sounds, so much that I could really design purely with the Echelon and proto.