I haven’t been as out of control buying guitar gear over the last year or two as I was prior, but I have gone through stretches where I get hyper obsessed with making tiny tweaks to my guitar sound that require me to buy amps and pedals and accessories. I own a bunch of amps and a lot of pedals. I mean, a lot of pedals. Every now and then one of them bites me in my conscious’ ass. That seems to have happened today.
The first time it happened was when I found out the owner/operator of a boutique pedal company that made a really cool fuzz pedal that I really wanted had donated money to a church that sponsored pray away the gay conversion bullshit. When called on it he got defensive and just made a mess out of it. He also apparently ripped off a circuit from a woman and then got really ugly with his verbal attacks when he was called out. The woman was actually trans and he went after her and it was just bad. I never bought that fuzz pedal. I never will. I won’t do business with a putz like that.
Fast forward to 2020 and I put a second pedal company on the no-fly list when one schmuck in California went after people who were protesting the murder of George Floyd. He first implied that his neighbors store windows were more important than a human being’s life, and then when he was called on it he verbally attacked his own customers. He said if we supported the George Floyd protests we were unworthy of using his gear. Can you believe that? What kind of utter narcissist would say something like that? I owned three of his pedals. Two of them were on my main board at the time and one of them is still the best pedal of its kind I’ve ever heard. Those three pedals are now rotting in a box in my cellar where they will spend the rest of eternity. I don’t do business with assholes like that and I won’t let other people see me using his stuff on the off chance it might lead to a sale. Fortunately this asshole’s company went out of business not long after. Unfortunately, he has had some luck restarting it.
Now there’s a new one to get pissed off about. Early this morning I saw a post on social media saying that the owner and operator of this very successful boutique pedal company that has been around since the birth of the boutique pedal market is a trump donor. The post included screen shots of receipts. I own two of this guy’s pedals. One of them is at my bass player’s house waiting for me to go over and pick it up. It’s possibly the best overdrive pedal I’ve ever played that isn’t made by Klon. The other is a mod of a well known overdrive that I put on my board about a month ago while looking to change up my sound for the demos I was making for the 50 songs in 90 days challenge. One great pedal, one very good pedal. I was also thinking about buying another overdrive that this guy sells. I had actually put it into my shopping cart on musiciansfriend.com but had not yet pulled the trigger. Thankfully. I will not do business with a fascist or even a fascist collaborator. Not in this lifetime at least. To hell with this clown. I’ll have to pull his pedal off of my board. I’ll probably replace it with a King of Tone because Analogman is on the record as being very anti-trump and… well… selfishly and musically… its one of the best overdrive pedals on Earth. So… win win, I guess.
I hate it when fascism and racism and sexism and religious bullshit make me feel bad about myself musically. Fuck all of those assholes.
I wasn’t going to name names, but screw that. The gay conversion donation came from JHS, the George Floyd asshole was Fulltone, and the trump donor is Keeley Electronics.
