New gear in development

I can't say a whole lot until the new products are ready for release, but here's what I can share.  There are currently 2 products in the R&D phase.  One is a 500 Series companion to the Super Storm - this one being a multi-tool with the DI section of the Dark Storm integrated into it.  The other is a bit of an oddity and it is turning out to be a pedal. 

The current pedal prototype is called the "Magnetar."  It started as something rather different from what it is now, but that's how development goes.  At first, I was trying to develop a crappy audio transformer.  Seriously.  The 2020S has been a popular product, but the naysayers think it isn't colorful enough.  Technically speaking, the more "colorful" a transformer is, the lower the quality of the transformer.  Sonic coloration is something transformer designers often try to avoid because it's considered a flaw.  What I attempted to do was make a transformer that cost a little as possible to produce and one that could be made as quickly as possible.  I created the 23Fe.  It's an iron core, bifilar wound, Hi-Z 1:1 transformer with no shielding can.  Super dead simple to assemble and with a very low cost core (Iron is cheap compared to some of the more esoteric high-nickel alloys).  While this transformer technically works and is absolutely very colorful, it's frequency response is rather poor in my opinion, which is why I felt it isn't good enough to be a product.  There is a low cut at 20Hz, which isn't a bad thing, but there is a low shelf attenuation of a few dB that spans from 20Hz all the way up to 1kHz.  Between 1-3kHz there is a sizeable frequency boost (bell curve).  The frequency span above this point is relatively flat and about 2dB louder than the low shelf.  Overall insertion loss is hard to put a number on due to the non linearity of the frequency response, but it's about a couple dB.

Next, I created an iron-core inductor as a "frequency-pass" for low frequencies.  I put this in parallel with the 23Fe transformer to cancel out the low frequency attenuation.   This worked to some degree, but the 1-3kHz boost seemed strong enough to make the bass issue rather insignificant.  For the extra cost of the inductor, it didn't really add all that much.  I couldn't justify putting these two magnetic devices together in a larger passive box.  It certainly was colorful, but that frequency response would require the user to use an EQ pedal to straighten things out a bit.  I don't think that will be a popular product.  

And now we move on to an active design - the Magnetar.  This has been in development for a few weeks and it now sounds quite impressive to both me and my assistant, Paul.  It has a sound that reminds me of vacuum tubes and old-school studio gear (colorful transformers).  What is it?  It's a crazy device that can radically shape your tone with one single knob... depending on where the knob is set.  Let me try to explain this wild contraption.  It uses one single active component - a lonely little JFET transistor, which in this circuit is being manipulated a lot of different ways at the same time.  The device is powered by an external 9V DC adapter and boosts that internally to 48V DC.  That creates the tube-like headroom.  Your instrument signal enters the pedal and the very first thing it hits is the 23Fe transformer.  From there it goes to the JFET where it gets bounced around many special ways.  One of those ways is by routing part of the JFET's output from the bias section through the aforementioned iron-core inductor to create a substantial bass boost.  In parallel with that is a capacitor to create a high frequency boost.  These components are tuned in the circuit to balance out the frequency response across the mid-range and somewhat the treble, while creating a boost in the lows.  I won't elaborate on the exact details of how the knob works at this time, but it does several things.  The knob changes the amount of bass and treble boost, increasing both with the knob's clockwise rotation, but also distortion and volume are increased as the knob gets turned up.  Fully counter-clockwise is unity gain with more of a sub-bass boost going on and a reduction of highs, the tone is otherwise clean.  Distortion is slowly introduced as the knob gets turned up, but... and I mean a big BUT, the pedal is designed to be like a vacuum tube preamp in both sound and feel.  That means the distortion will decrease as you lower the input signal feeding into the pedal.  Another way to say it is if you want a scooped sort of sound with clarity/no distortion, you turn the knob up all the way and then turn down the volume knob on your instrument.  It reacts highly to the level of the input signal.  Touch sensitivity like a tube amp.  If you want it to sound like a raging beast, try using humbuckers instead of single coils or drive it with a booster.  There are very different and useful tones across the entire rotation of the knob and due to the interactive nature of the pedal with the instrument plugged in, you can get an endless amount of tonal variation.  It has tons of tone and tons of headroom.  It's too early to say how much the Magnetar will sell for or even if it will be called that.  Initial testing has found it works very well with both bass and guitar, but it was initially designed with bass in mind.  I think it will probably be around $299 USD.