Here's FXDB's interview with Guillaume Martinod of MSM Workshop:

How did MSM Workshop start?

In the beginning, I have tried many pedals to find "my" tone, and in the end, something was missing every time. After searching in France about pedal mods, it was very difficult to find a company. So I began to mod my own effects. Once I had modded some effects, the idea of sharing this grew and finally Msm Workshop was born!

Here's FXDB's interview with Ryan McCay of Yellowcake:

How did Yellowcake start?

It first started as a "Let's see if I can do this." and after that I began developing the Furry Burrito and it's been on the market for about a year and a half...

Inspiration really came from a sound I had in my head that I wanted get out of one box...

I was also inspired by a lot of stuff already being sold on the market... and there is a lot of it... The DIY sites were very helpful and I found myself wondering why a lot of these DIYers weren't putting their own stuff out there... although it's a lot of work to do so....

Here's FXDB's interview with Ryan Clarke of Dr. Scientist:

How did Dr. Scientist start?

I got into building effects back in 2003 when I left the oilfields of British Columbia and went back to school, a tech school called NAIT in Edmonton. I originally thought I'd be interested in learning how to do home audio gear but as a long time guitar player I couldn't help but be most excited to make guitar effects.

I made a simple MOSFET booster (thank you Aron Nelson for his starter project and forum!) and a Big Muff in the fall of 2003 and from there I was hooked, I've lived and breathed guitar effects every day since then. I graduated in 2005, took a year to work on the 7 pedals that would be our initial line-up, and we officially started selling pedals in August of 2006.

I received lots of help from a couple instructors at school, thank you very much to Mr. MacMillan and Mr. Hope. I learned a lot about building from Aron Nelson's DIY forum, thanks very much to him and to Mr. Snowberg for his assistance with the RRR and to Mr. Keen for sharing his wealth of knowledge.

More recently I've been taught some really cool things by my pedal peers like Austin Lightfoot (Lightfoot Labs) and Steve Bragg (Empress Effects). Both have changed the way I make pedals and I deeply respect and thank them both, they've had a big impact on our little business.

I find a lot of my peers really inspiring. The digital work of Lightfoot Labs, Empress Effects, and WMD are really inspiring to me. The builders on the I Love Fuzz forum are very inspirational too, guys that think outside of all boxes plus are really great people that you'd be happy to have crash on your couch.

Here's FXDB's interview with Wes Kuhnley of Resonant Electronic Design:

How did Resonant Electronic Design start?

Peter and I worked for a well-known pro-audio company for a few years. Building and testing pre-amps all day gets BORING... to entertain ourselves we'd talk about guitars, amps, tones, mics, recording etc... We're both involved in the studio side of things on occasion too. Peter owned a great studio here in Minneapolis for 3 or 4 years that was one of the best sounding rooms around. We ended up deciding that we didn't really like any of the drive or boost pedal offerings out there, and started designing what became the Manifold Drive and Graviton Boost pedals.

I learned most of what I know about production and design from a fellow named Dan Kennedy at Great River Electronics. Dan is a really no-nonsense, no-bullshit kind of guy. Design it right the first time, so you don't have to deal with warranty issues later on. That's where our lifetime warranty comes from... We feel perfectly fine backing our stuff up forever, because it's designed properly in the first place. My father also played a huge roll in my interest and knowledge of electronics, he's been a EE for 30 years or something... and also puts up with no BS.

I mentioned earlier that the impetus for the Field Effects line being a lack of satisfying options out there... well, once you get into the business, you learn about more and more guys out there doing great work. I'm personally driven to do better, cooler stuff when I see the work of guys like Jack Deville or Philippe Herndon (Caroline Guitar Co). I drool over Jack's delay pedal on nearly a daily basis, and the Caroline Wave Cannon is one of the best distortion pedals I've ever played. Fantastic stuff.

Here's FXDB's interview with Beto Glaser of DynaBoxx:

How did DynaBoxx start?

I've always been interested in analog effects. In my researches I found Sérgio Lucena, an electronic technician and electronics project developer. Talking to him, I exposed my ideas about new effects projects and he developed them all. We built all the prototypes, designed the products and decided to put them on the market.

We made pedals from 2005 until 2007.

Empress Effects

This Ottawa, Ontario based company has been around for some time now. They are building a nice range of pedals that started off with delay and modulation but got recently expanded with drive and compressor pedals. They have a knack for building pedals with a twist and then some and pack a lot of options and tweakability in them. I’ve already reviewed 3 of their pedals before so here’s another one! Check out my reviews for the Tap Tremolo, ParaEQ and Super Delay as well.

Compressor

The Empress Effects Compressor comes in a fantastic looking package and that’s even before you have plugged in. I’m a sucker for a nice color scheme.  As with all Empress pedals, the build quality is great and even the way it gets shipped is totally cool. There’s a lot going on in this pedal so let’s take a look at the controls. There are 5 dials so let’s look at them from left to right.  Input controls the input level into the compressor circuit. More input means more compression, this is also very useful to dial the pedal in for single coils or humbuckers. Attack controls how fast the compressor reacts to the signal and Release controls how fast it goes back to original level.  These 3 controls already give you a lot of tweakability. Then there’s the mix control, it gives you anything from totally dry to full wet and everything in between. This control lets you dial back dynamics.  Finally there’s the output control, this can also get you a boost if you want to. In the upper left corner is a little ratio switch that offers 3 settings (2:1-4:1-10:1). Top right we find another 3-way switches that lets you select what you want to see on the meter. This meter is awesome to fine tune your settings. The pedal can be run between 9 and 18 volt. Finally there’s a sidechain in/out that allows you to control the signal going to the compressor circuit.

Here's FXDB's interview with Steve Kollander of Crucial Audio:

How did Crucial Audio start?

I have been into electronics and music since I was a child. I have been designing pedals, amplifiers, preamps and other electronic products/modifications since the 1980's, while working as a repair technician for pro-audio products and an applications engineer for a GPS based time & frequency reference company. I decided to get back to my roots, and I quit the 'engineering day job' in 2006, and started Crucial Audio. It is the accumulation of my life's experience with music, electronics, performance, and manufacturing. All of the dues paid, and time spent doing these things have added up to where we are today, and where we are heading tomorrow.

Over the years I have worked and/or spoken with many great engineers and technicians who have inspired and encouraged me along the way. Folks like Bruce Zinky (Zinky Electronics), Bill Krinard, Jim Hanley, Mike Soldano (Soldano), Josh Fiden (Voodoo Lab); just to name a few...

RR Amps

RR Amps is a Dutch 1-man operation. Remco Ranschaert has been around for a couple of years and started out building rack gear (loopers, switchers), midi-controllers and full rigs. He expanded and started working on his own amp and has now his 1st pedal out, the Fat Drive.

Fat Drive

I’m not going to beat around the bush, the Fat Drive is based on the much-loved Klon Centaur.  It isn’t a direct clone though as RR Amps took the original circuit and made some changes.  As with the Klon, the Fat Drive comes in a BIG box. It’s not really pedalboard real estate friendly but, and you can trust me on this, you won’t mind once you have heard it! The Fat Drive has 3 controls. The Level and Gain controls don’t need an explanation. The Level has a massive amount of headroom and even with the gain at 0, it WILL kick your amp seriously in the nuts.  The Gain control kicks in at about 8:00 with a touch of crunch and it will get to a reasonable amount of gain near the end of the dial. This is not a high gain pedal, plenty for classic rock. The Treble control is not a typical tone control but works really well fine tuning the pedal to fit your amp.

Here's FXDB's interview with Lyon Graulty of Station Audio:

How did Station Audio start?

I got into electronics as a kid after my parents got sick of me taking things apart and bought me an experimenters kit. Years later, after getting into electric guitar, I started taking those apart and rewiring the pickups and pots with coil cut switches, and phase/series witches. Building pedals was the natural extension of my curiosity in sound and electronics.

Another fine addition to the Malekko Omicron series is this Phaser.

Sweet analog phase from vintage to modern and an internal control for frequency range make the Malekko Phaser an extremely versatile little analog 4 stage phaser.

Looks and controls

• It’s incredibly small, casing of aluminum, undefined color, it’s not purple or pink, I’d say it’s fuchsia with a sparkly finish and white silkscreen.
• True bypass switch and red status LED
• No batteries, it runs off a standard Boss style 9VDC power supply.
• 2 external controls:
• Color adjusts the tone (phasing frequency) of the effect
• Speed adjusts the speed of the modulation
• Internal trimpot that controls the coarse frequency for the phase effect. Set all the way left will allow the lower frequencies to be phasing so it’ll sound bassier, all the way right allows more high end frequencies to pass, so it’ll sound treblier.