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The Shake Tremolo is a great pedal. You can read more descriptions of it below, or you can listen to the audio demo. I really think this is one of my favorite pedals I have ever made. The shake is a larger and more complex pedal than a simple fuzz or overdrive, but if you want one, please let us know chadbrooksis AT gmail DOT com
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Great interesting news. A friend from years back is starting a design business, after years of working for other folks. Ryan Scott does great work and it affordable. His design business is Wild Olive Studios and he did a great job with this work. My thanks go out to Ryan for his Logo Design contest he runs through facebook, because I was a winner earlier this summer. So Brooks Custom Shop is now branded.
We also have a twitter feed now @brooksCS. We will be communicating about new designs, demos and custom work. If you are on twitter, follow us.
If you are on facebook, please become a fan of Brooks Custom Shop
Thanks for your time, and if you need anything, let me know.
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Boost pedals have become quite the rage lately. I use several of them, as well as setting overdrive pedals to offer clean boosts. They are the easiest way to add a “dirty” channel to a cleanish non-master volume amp like the Epiphone Valve Jr. that I bring with me to play in smaller venues. If you need a boost pedal, drop me a line and we can get the best thing for you on your pedalboard.
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The Promised Update
You gotta love it when life gets busy…..but here is the promised update (along with a few other goodies). I have tried to stick to some really simple effects, but I wanted some more hot-rodded stuff for myself, and I wanted to share them with you.
SHAKE TREMOLO
The Shake Tremolo is based of the infamous EA Trem, which is the basis for many boutique tremolos. One of the neat features is the volume switch. As a fan of modulation, I know how you sometimes get a volume drop when you engage a pedal. The great thing about the EA circuit is it has a boost built in front of it, and even more enterprising people have figured out how to separate the boost from the circuit. The middle footswitch turns the effect off and you have a really nice boost that plays well after your dirt boxes. I also have been known to have two tremolo pedals on my board at a time because I like different speeds. The added 2nd rate knob allows you to toggle between two speeds with a footswitch.
This pedal really allows you to trim down your board if you need a smaller set-up. You are able to get 3 pedals in 1. The enclosure is larger than some pedals (a little smaller than a Line 6 DL-4), but well worth it.
The Swirl
The Swirl is a “Fully Loaded Phaser”, and gives me alot of options. It starts off life as a simple clone of a well known 1 knob phaser (90), but then it can be broken down to a phase 45. The addition of the depth control gives more control over the phase. The vibe switch changes some capacitors around to get a more vibrato sound, like the classic uni-vibe (Note:this is not a univibe clone, but it gives you the idea of it). To me, this pedal screams “breathe” off of Dark Side. It is pretty complex to build but worth it.
Pricing on these two pedals is higher than my usual, but if you are curious email me (chadbrooksis at gmail dot com)
I wanted to record demos for these, but my wife and I are leaving on vacation tomorrow, so you will have to wait a week.
And here are a few more finishes from my standard fuzz boxes.
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Whats to come….
It has been a busy couple of weeks in the shop. In the next few days lots of great stuff is getting rolled out…so stay tuned.
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The Gunslinger is a tube screamer based overdrive featuring a Burr Brown opamp and HUGE headroom. This pedal gets pretty wild and can also get tame and offer a great clean boost. Price is $75 for base pedal and you get to pick your enclosure and LED color.
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I have been having a busier summer than I imagined, but I have spent some time in the shop working on a few new options for folks in their quest for tone. Tonight, I got one of these bad boys laced up and kicking. Hopefully by this weekend both of them will be ready to debut.
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These are two pedals I am building for my own rig.
The Swirl is a phase 90 clone that has been tweaked and toggled to death. It allows switching between phase 90 and 45 and changing to some settings that emulate a classic vibrato rotating speaker. Getting away from 1 knob, this guy has rate, depth, mix and feedback.
The Shake is a tremolo with a boost circuit built in that fixes that colume drop problem that plagues many trems (this is based off the EA Tremolo that many boutique pedals use as a starting platform). I built it so the trem can be taken out and the pre-amp is the only effect on. I also added a second rate control and a switch so I can have more options.
These have been on my bench for the last couple of weeks and I am excited about getting them going. Like I said, these are for my rig, but if anyone is interested I can make another. They are somewhat complicated, so I will be breaking my own personal rule of “cheap tone”, but they should be worth it.
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Swirled ThunderFuss Plus using newer high gain transistors. Loud, Fast and Thick. But it cleans up nice too!!
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This is an Iron Horse +. It is the same as the standard Iron horse fuzz, but the clipping is set up to be more modular (with socketed components) and a “body” switch. This was an attempt to add more low-end, but I find that it hads more body to your tone, instead of just lowend. I am experimenting with the values with this switch.
I had these “thump” switches to alot of pedals, and I am thinking about putting together a parts bag and selling it so you can really tweak out these switches to tailor to your amp and guitar
