SOLD OUT – THANK YOU! A very special Cannonball. For the holiday special.

  I guess you could say…we’re cooking up something special this year. SOLD OUT THANK YOU This is a very special piece. Nearly a decade ago, we had the privilege of making these pedals for a very special artist. After they passed away, I wrote about the experience in this Premier Guitar piece. Since it appeared on their board,  we’ve had a bunch people ask us to make a batch of pedals exactly like the ones we made for them. I’d always rebuffed it as I considered it an exclusive for them, and also because the story of how we scrambled to get them made, overnighted out to their tech, and put onto the boards before the tour was special to me.  They’d initially really wanted a retailer exclusive version that Pete Thorn had demo’d and that they’d used in the studio, but it was not available at the time. I explained that I wasn’t comfortable giving out or direct selling a dealer exclusive, but I promised I had a plan to deliver similar pieces with a similar DIY/industrial aesthetic that I promised he would love. Truth be told, I had no actual plan, but the need to come up with something in a hurry goes a long way. So I took the knobs that we had on hand, sprayed the enclosures with rattle can hammered grey, used the old Dymo labeler from my mother’s ceramic tile studio (the one that she used to use to label mason jars full of glaze) and baked two enclosures in a discarded toaster oven that I’d bought at Goodwill. Then I rushed to handwire the circuit boards myself (so as to not interrupt our team that was backordered on retailer orders) add the mute/havoc toggle, and get these things in the air. Well, now we’ve decided to make a limited batch of 25 of these things available to our customers and the world. And once they’re gone, they’re gone forever. We’ll be donating $50 from the sale of each unit to their foundation, and we’re gonna sweeten the deal for you. These pedals will be made exactly the same way – using some of the very last strategic reserve of WC1/Cannonball boards we have (highly inefficient things, but I believe layout matters and affects sounds) and digging into the last little baggy of NOS thru hole JFETs that we’d kept around. These have all the same features:  a small function toggle that allowed for either havoc or kill/mute, a different op-amp function, voltage starving, carbon composition resistors in the signal path, and tantalum capacitors in the gain stage. These will be wired entirely by hand, just like the originals. Also just like the originals – we sourced and used the same knobs, we even sourced the same damn LED & housing that we don’t use anymore, I spray painted the enclosures with the same primer and a rattle can finish, bake each one in that old toaster oven (pro-tip: never use it again for food!), and each one will also have its own special badge on the inside.  PLUS: each will come with the fancy red coffee cup AND a half pound special blend of Caroline Corporate Asset Coffee to keep you warm and alert during the holiday season! AND…if that isn’t enough….three (3) lucky customers will also win a random vintage pedal from our collection that we think you’ll like. We’ll do the drawing before we ship pedals out on December 13th, 2023. Thanks again friends, for another year of digging and supporting our work through thick and thin, and letting us do cool stuff. It means more than you know. Next year, we have a bunch of wild stuff planned. As Arnold said: stick around.