I often get asked the question: "How did you get started?". Here is where my journey into making pedals began.
I graduated from Federal Way High School in 1998. At the time my only experience with circuits was an introduction to Ohm's Law and Kirchhoff's Voltage Laws in my AP Physics class, and I had yet to pick up a guitar.
About a year later I was hanging out at the apartment of one of the leaders of the young adults group at my church. He was playing his guitar and having a good time, when he stopped abruptly, looked straight at me and said...
"You wanna play, don't you?"
"Of course I want to play", I replied. He got up, went into his bedroom and came back with two guitars. "Here, this is my old one. Now it's yours."
Over the next few months, I practiced regularly - both for the love of learning and to pay back the generosity I was shown. I saved up money for an acoustic-electric guitar and started to play at my church.
Electrified Sound & the Quest for Tone
Because I began my journey playing acoustic, my introduction to effects was through reverb, delay, and chorus. I didn't really know how to use any other effects. I remember buying a multi-effect for acoustic guitar made by Yamaha, and exploring many of the different sounds. My younger brother learned to play the bass, then guitar & drums, and soon we were playing together.
While I had picked up an electric guitar and tried it in those early years, I didn't try playing one with a band until the summer of 2006. I remember buying a Vox ToneLab SE because I wanted to learn about different sounds, and having a platform that let you quickly switch between different amp and effect combos seemed like a perfect place to start.
A New Hobby
I couldn't afford a good tube amp, so I spent my money trying out various pedals on my quest to figure out the kinds of tones I could make with an electric guitar. In 2007, I discovered modded Boss pedals by Keeley and then DIY pedals from BYOC. The rest, they say, is history.
In 2008, I learned to mod existing pedal designs from BYOC (left), develop and create pedals based on specific customer requests (middle), and then design & build my own circuit boards (right).
I sold my BYOC builds on eBay and then posted a listing that simply offered to make one-off, fully custom pedals...as long as I could find the PCBs available for purchase that would form the core of the circuit. I gained experience in many types of circuits, including hand-wiring some circuits point-to-point. I didn't care if I made any money, I was just enjoying the hobby of crafting effect pedals.
G.A.S. & No Cash
What is a private school teacher making $25k a year to do with all his pedal creations? I couldn't afford to keep the pedals I built, so I sold them on eBay under the username VonRutter. Before I knew it, I had developed a line of more than a dozen effects and had a steady stream of sales.
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