Introducing Fat Foot Effects
Distortion is pretty easy to fathom, right? it makes your guitar louder, crunchier and provides immediate satisfaction. That’s why most pedal boards have one, and it’s highly likely that most songs featuring an electric guitar will have some degree of distortion in the sound.
But how do you start making a distortion? what motivates you to get out your breadboard? Team Machine asked Indiana based guitar pedal builder, Fat Foot Effects, the makers of fabulous Thallium 81, why they started in the world of stomp boxes and to tell us a little bit more about the lovely little dirt box they make in the Cornfields of America. So, over to you, Tone Team Alpha:
“As with many others it all started tinkering with pedal circuits, doing Mods and re-housing pedals for buddies, making clones and custom one off’s. One day I just decided to go from hobby to make it an official business. The whole reason I/we do this is to bring usable high quality pedals to working musicians. I still enjoy more then anything building a pedal from someone the ties together a tone someone has been searching for. I also love sharing what I have learned, with that being said, I am an Electronic Engineer, but with pedals and music it is more about the sound than the maths. I use pedals to shut off my maths brain and in some cases I just part swap until it sounds right. Because that is all that matters! People ask about where names come from, sadly there isn’t any rich story or cool smash up of names as to how the Fat Foot Effects came to be, literally it just popped into my head one day. I liked it so I used it.”
About the Thallium 81:
“The Thallium 81 is based off a few different circuits. It started, way back, as a clone(ish) of the 250. One of my favourite pedals. I have modified mine to my tastes but wanted more control over the tone so I added a tone circuit. It started off as a basic filter but over time it evolved into a modified Muff style tone circuit. Once the design was done, based on my demands for usefulness and versatility, the Thallium 81 can provide a clean(ish) boost all the way to a thick, rich, harmonic hard clipping distortion.”
You look at most guitar pedal builders and they will most likely tell you the same thing:- that they are passionate, dedicated and want to create the best effects a musician can buy. Fat Foot Effects are one of these companies.
The Thallium 81 is now available exclusively in the UK here at Break the Machine.
