It is hard to look at our pedalboards today and think anything other than we are living through a golden age for guitar effects pedals.
The past decade has been a boom time for stompbox design; from a Bigsby-style vibrato to a Peavey Decade practice amp, or from high-functioning digital delay pedals from Strymon et al to genuine spring reverb, you can get almost anything in a pedal.
But the evolution of digital modelling and profiling technology is here and it is disrupting the market, and Brian Wampler warns that pedal manufacturers are facing a Napster moment.
Speaking with Adam Wakeling for the Products of Music YouTube channel, Wampler, whose pedal company has developed signature pedals for the likes of Brad Paisley and Andy Wood, and made some of the finest dirt pedals on the market (we’re looking at you, Tumnus overdrive pedal), says the traditional business model is under threat in an era when you can “capture” a pedal or amp and use it digitally, either in a hardware unit such as a Neural DSP Quad Cortex or Kemper Profiler.
Digital might just be getting started, but Wampler says it is already eating into the pedal market – and tube amps are on the menu, too.
“I think really, everyone in the pedal market is kind of, I would say, concerned,” he says. “I think it’s going to take a big chunk of the market. I mean, it is, really. It’s not, ‘Is it going to?’ It is [already], as well as the tube amp market.”
Wampler believes pedal brands have two options; they can pretend it isn’t happening and wait for the inevitable. “You can always stick your head in the sand and ignore it and think, ‘It’s not going to happen to me. It’s not going to happen to me,’ and then wonder what happens in five or 10 years,” he says.
Or they can adapt and evolve, and work out what it is that they can create and offer players to keep them engaged with the brand. This is something he has had to for with Wampler Pedals, and has branched out into guitar plugin design. When Wampler launched the Catacombs delay and reverb pedal, it made the plugin available free with each purchase, and simultaneously releasing the plugin for $49.99. The first step is working out what to do, what to design.
“I’ll just write it out, just get everything in my brain out onto paper,” he says. “And I am looking for what are the possible pivots that I can make that might make a dent? What are the things that I can do that might be a unique spin on things to keep me, and keep others interested in my product? Or if I need to start introducing something that I don’t know how to do, how do I get to the people that know how to do that?”
Neural modelling would be a prime example of what Wampler’s talking about. He could learn how to do it, or he could hire someone who did. What Wampler doesn’t see happening is the market returning to its analogue norms. Some of the prices make it harder to compete.
“The day of buying a kit online of some pedal and selling it on Reverb, others will do it, I just think that that method is gonna be really, really much harder to sell as time goes on,” he says. “And it is now! It’s just going to be a lot tougher sell as time goes on. I mean, you can buy a $30 pedal now that’s based off a Rat, right? Or whatever you want.”
But Wakeling poses the real question here. What does it mean for a pedal manufacturer when someone could theoretically go into a music store, buy a bunch of distortion pedals, capture them and then take the pedals back? Or simply access those captures online?
“Well, yeah, I mean, it’s analogous to Napster, for those who remember that,” says Wampler. “Everybody had music that you just uploaded on Napster, and now no one needs to buy any more music. So, I mean, the question is, well, what do you do? Well, eventually, Spotify forms. [Laughs] You know? I mean, is that good? Not if you’re an artist.”
Hence, the Wampler plugins, the pivot. But it might eventually come down to a question of taste and player preference. Wampler is no analogue purist. That might be where his passion lies but he’s not dogmatic about it.
For some reason, if I’m mainly recording for a month or something, I’m just playing direct in the box, whenever I play into a tube amp, my timing is off
He argues that the differences between analogue and digital gear actually affect his playing. And there’s nothing like the direct playing experience that comes with playing with a tube amp.
“For some reason, if I’m mainly recording for a month or something, I’m just playing direct in the box, whenever I play into a tube amp, my timing is off,” he says. “And it really messes with me a lot. Maybe that’s a me being me thing. Maybe I’m just hypersensitive to that. I’ve never really heard that many people complain about that. But I definitely notice a big difference.
“If I’m mainly focussing on playing this through my plugins, then go to something that’s truly analogue, just the entire analogue signal path, it really messes up, especially with picking fast.”
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