 | Mike Piera - Analog Man
Of course I’ve known about the amazing pedals by Analog Man for many years. Mike Piera aka Analog Man has been setting the standard for incredible handmade effects pedals for more than 15 years. The sheer quality of his gear has been so consistently fantastic as to cement him his place in history as the father of modern day boutique effects pedals.
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| I remember seeing my first Sun Face, Mike’s famous ‘Fuzz Face’ clone on a pedal board in Sydney many years ago and thinking how it was the coolest thing I’d ever seen. I asked the guitarist what it was and he went on for 20 minutes how it was the greatest fuzz pedal in the world.
15 years later after my own collection of fuzz pedals verges on the ridiculous I can confirm my old friend’s conclusion that of all the Fuzz Face fuzz’s I’ve tried, nothing has beat the amazing SunFace. Add to that his other incredible offerings such as the Juicer, the Beano boost, the King of Tone, Peppermint Fuzz, Chorus and new delay pedal not to mention his ‘mods’ and it’s no surprise that Mike has been the man to beat for so long. So how has he done it? Let’s ask the man himself
Dan- legend has it that it was on old Maestro MP1 phaser that first got you interested in effects? Can you tell us a bit about this and how you started out?
MP - yes, back in about '74 I was getting bored with the sound of my Farfisa organs so I was looking for something to spice them up. My local electronic music dealer, Danbury Electronic instruments, the Mellotron importer at the time, had the Maestro and it sounded cool. My guitarist tried it and he loved it too but I kept it for my keys. I still have it, I think one of the pots is bad. Sold my Farfisas.
Dan - So what does the title ‘BOUTIQUE’ effects manufacturer mean to you? What do you think of it as a label?
MP- It makes me cringe a bit, but I guess we can't avoid it. I think it means hand made, higher quality effects, maybe with some customizing possible. We build everything to order so we don't mind custom jobs.
Dan - Let’s talk about the Fuzz Face for a little bit. Firstly why the FF as a circuit to work on?
MP- Back in the mid 90s there were a few guys in the USA into vintage pedals, and one they always wanted were fuzzfaces. But we mostly found silicon ones, so we learned how to mod them to germanium. One guy who was really into this early-on was Jeff Bober, founder of Budda Amps. He used to sell a kit with germanium transistors to build your own fuzzface. But all he could get then was the lousy US-made fake NKTs, but his were by far the best sounding fuzzface clones around. So I kept messing around with them and finally found some good transistors, with help from a few friends who never got into the effects business themselves.
Dan - I have to ask you this because it puzzles me. I know a bit about the electronics malarkey, but for the life of me I can’t work out why the SunFace sounds so consistently great. In a shootout of 10 Fuzz Face pedals, all with nearly the exact same circuit and components, The SunFace was, for the ears in the room, the clear winner on the day, and there was almost zero audible difference between the 3 SunFace examples that were bought in.
MP- I am glad to hear that! We spend a LOT of time testing every transistor, for three parameters (gain, leakage, and noise) and have probably discarded thousands of them. But the trick was FINDING those batches, and they are all gone now. So we are not sure how long the normal white dot NKT275 sunface can remain in production as the last few batches we got from the UK were unusable, they had all been cherry picked. Of course we have also tweaked the circuit surrounding the transistors and chosen the best available parts for that. Some of the newer boutique guys pushed us into using more of the mojo type capacitors over the past few years. I don't think they sound better but they look great.
Dan - There may be no better person in the world to answer this question, what do you think it is that we find so alluring about pedals? Why do they seem to capture our imagination so much when a pedal’s sound is so subject to what goes into it and what it goes out into?
MP - I wish I knew, I'm just happy that this occurs. People don't seem to get tired of finding the tone, it's a moving target but we enjoy shooting round after round!
Dan - What do you think makes a truly great pedal, one that will stand the test of time?
MP- It really helps to have someone who is held in very high esteem making it part of his signature sound, and the pedal should work well for normal musicians too.
Dan - So you started all this from nothing but a fascination with tone, and have built up a company that ships product all over the world being used by some of the greatest guitar players out there. What’s it like hearing music that has been created using the gear you designed?
MP- It's wonderful, especially when you did not know how or when the artist got it, or that they were even using it. Some companies ship hundreds of pedals out to all the "names", we don't do that, we hope they will come to us. However I do try to get out to as many shows and concerts as I can, and offer our pedals to players that I really admire.
Today I went into NYC to meet Jared Scharff, Saturday Night Lives's guitarist. While on the set, Derek Trucks came in and we talked a bit. He was playing downstairs with the Allman Brothers on the Jimmy Fallon show. But I didn't try to give him a pedal, if he's interested I hope he will contact us on his own.
Dan - What’s your advice for effect builders who has dreams of doing the same?
MP - Hop in a time machine, go back to the late 90s and you can be very successful making pedals! Or try to make something different. Most of my products have been made due to customer requests and people in the past tended to ask for what they knew, so our pedals are not usually too different, more like a nice worn-in pair of jeans.
Mike’s Top 5
Pedals
EMS Synthi Hi-Fli (still looking for one)
TS808
Small Clone chorus,
VOX Clyde McCoy wah
Ibanez LA Metal (I have about 20 of them...)
Players
Jimmy Page, Jeff Beck, Jim Weider, Steve Kimock, Nigel Tufnel
Albums
Physical Graffiti
OK Computer
Paul's Boutique
The Beatles (white album)
any early Genesis album
Tones
Any Jimmy Page tone that sounds terrible alone but epic with the band,
Steve Kimock's clean (or fuzzed out!) tone
Jeff Beck's fingers
Duane Allman's '59 Les Paul into a cranked Marshall
Clapton's 60s "woman tone".
clich here to go to the Analog Man website |
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