SOUL DRIVE

Only the best overdrive in the world. Not only is it made with the best components in the world, it uses a real vacuum tube, not a circuit simulating the real thing. Soul Drive is a booster/overdrive (depending on the gain knob position), which makes use of a NOS 12AU7 tube.



Features:
-True Bypass
-Point to point wiring because it sounds better
-Teflon insulated Silver wire & Silver Solder for the best conductivity and sound
-NOS Paper in Oil caps, plus the tone control uses one of my hand-made Gallery Acoustics paper in oil Fat Caps. PiO sounds better than anything!
-NOS RCA 12AU7 tube (made in USA), selected for low noise and beautiful tone which can't be beat!

Sound:
-Warm, open, detailed, smooth.

The King Tone DI Box (ver. 2.0)

The King Tone is a passive DI box with a whole lot of mojo. It was designed specifically for use with Keyboards, but sounds remarkable on bass as well.

Features a vintage UTC transformer, and a very simple eq circuit which uses a NOS PiO cap from the 50's. The eq can be bypassed, but when engaged it allows the user to reduce the highs of the signal. As the knob is turned, the frequency is lowered while the amount of cut is increased. Basically, at its minimum setting the eq slightly reduces the high frequencies, but when turned all the way up the eq will only allow sub bass to pass.

The box also features an impedance switch, which changes the character and volume output of the box depending on the preamp and instrument you're using, as well as the EQ settings on the box. The tranny switch can be rather useful.

Finally, the box has an output switch to choose either 1/4" unbalanced or XLR balanced. The standard "Thru" found on most DI boxes, was omitted from this design by request of the client it was built for (would have cost slightly more).

Germanium Drive

It kicks ass. Germanium drive is my first pedal with active circuitry. Its a vintage-style fuzz/overdrive based on the original Dallas Arbiter Fuzz Face. This tone machine uses NOS Germanium transistors from the 1960's... and these are transistors you can't find anymore, so this pedal is to be a one of a kind.
Features True bypass, one of my hand-made vintage-style paper in oil caps, Silver wire, Silver Solder, point to point wiring. High grade components throughout.

Self Monitoring System

I needed a headphone monitoring system at the studio and didn't have the funds to buy a complete system. Necessity is of course the mother of invention. After a couple revisions, I now have the SMS-1B.
The SMS-1B is a remote passive headphone volume controller. The input is balanced XLR and the output is a standard headphone jack. Back in the control room are a couple headphone amps cranked all the way and wired through our patch bay to the live room. The outputs on the live room wall are XLR male so we can use them for a variety of scenarios (like re-amping). The remote box allows us to run super long distances with high quality mic cables, vs those crappy headphone extension cables. Also the box allows the musician to have control over their monitoring volume.

Grail Tone

Today I completed a box for Matt Corey Productions, out of Watertown, NY. The unit, named "Grail tone," is a colour box designed to impart character and vibe on anything passing through its circuitry.

The photo does not represent the final version, which has some extra components and a slightly different layout. There are 2 sets of controls on Grail Tone. The main control is for tone specifically. It has 4 choices as follows: Smooth, Focused, Vintage and Lo-Fi. The second control is the Bypass. The Bypass switch has 3 modes of operation. The unit is either active, bypassed (true bypass), or what's been dubbed "The Netherworld," which is some weird freak of science/accidental engineering. The Netherworld is neither fully active, nor completely bypassed... and sounds different from the normal mode. The Vintage setting on The Netherworld setting is pretty awesome!

Inside this holy grail of tone are some of my hand made components, such as my paper in oil capacitors and an inductor. I also used some exotic non-inductive wire-wound resistors and wired the whole thing up with silver plated teflon insulated wire.  Input transformer is a Jensen and the color transformer was a crummy power transformer that I repurposed.

Mission Control

Mission Control is a NASA-Grade master volume control. There's a ton of monitor controllers out there, but they all have one major flaw... too many features. Believe it or not, this is a really bad thing when sonic purity or total transparency is desired. Switches degrade sound quality. The more switches you have in the signal chain, the lesser your sound quality. Don't you want to hear exactly what your mixes sound like?

Silver and Gold! Input and output jacks are Neutrik XLR jacks with silver pins. Silver plated, teflon insulated wire with silver solder. Wired point to point.  Expensive 24 position non-shorting Elma rotary attenuator.

The Legendary Lightning Boy Thunder Caps - hand made paper in oil caps.

My hand-made capacitors are paper in oil, with silver plated stranded wire leads that are teflon insulated.

Paper in oil caps have long been held in high esteem by audiophiles, recording engineers, and guitar players for their organic smooth tone and rich detail.  PiO caps are considered some of the most transparent sounding caps in existence.

Lightning Boy Audio (Gallery Acoustics) Fat Caps are used in many early audio creations by Lightning Boy Audio. Most commonly they are found in the EQ circuitry of LBA gear, including Soul Drive, Olympus and the SPEQ-1 passive Equalizer.