having a power switch on the back of the
pedal, to turn off the battery without
having to unplug the input cable. Why
hasn't anybody ever thought of that
before? Another cool idea was to have
LEDs shining on the knobs, so you can see
them in the dark. With our angled knob
arrangement, I came up with an idea to drill
holes on the side of the knob that get
higher up as you rotate the knob more, and
there are hidden LEDs that shine on the
side of the knob, lighting it up nicely for
dimly lit stage performances. People were
asking for easier battery access, as
opposed to the typical four screws on the
bottom, so my mechanical engineer friend
Ken Chappell helped develop a cool
battery door that slides open on the side,
and is held in by magnets inside, so you
don't need any tools to get to the battery.
Another important use of customer
feedback is to find out what people don’t
like about our pedals. I pay attention when
people make negative comments like, “I
thought it was too fizzy” or “it needed
more gain,” and try to work that stuff out
on new models. The Pro series have a lot of
little switches and hidden tweaks to
address stuff like that: The Smooth/Edge
switch knocks out some fizz, the Fat
switches give a thicker attack, the High/
Low gain switches are to help get cleaner
and heavier tones from one pedal, internal
Noise Gate adjustments help “tweakers”
dial that effect in, and there’s an Octave-Up
blend knob inside the TightFuzz Pro.
I also offer mods for our pedals. For
example, some guys with vintage output
pickups thought the TightFuzz pedal
needed more fuzz, so I designed a
switchable More Fuzz mod inside the
battery door for those guys. I had bassists
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