We recently chatted with Jamie Stillman, owner and mastermind of Akron, Ohio’s Earthquaker Devices, one of the leading innovators in guitar pedals/effects. We touch on everything from general guitar nerdery to how the pandemic is affecting the day-to-day operations of EQD. You can delve more into everything Earthquaker Devices related here.
Dave Kezer [9:30 Club]: There’s a joke that anyone who starts to listen to rap immediately wants to try to rap. It seems like anyone who starts to build guitar pedals immediately thinks they can start a pedal company. What do you think it takes to actually get a company off the ground in a sustainable way?
LOL! I used to make a similar joke that every guitar player with a soldering iron is a pedal company. It used to feel that way, but I think the craze has died down. It takes a lot of patience, hard work, and (possibly most importantly) good ideas to build a stable effect pedal company. They almost always start out as a hobby and it’s good to realize when it has moved beyond that point. In my case, it was very important to realize when I was in over my head and when to bring on people who have real knowledge in handling the business on a day-to-day level and have the ability to look at the bigger picture. I have punk rock business skills which worked up to a point, but I’m better suited to the creative role.
In your EQDQ&A Ep. 1, you joked about how long it took you to truly start understanding the differences/complexities of gear. I nerd out on gear so much that sometimes I lose focus on just enjoying playing instruments for the sake of it. How far is too far when it comes to putting every facet of gear under the microscope?
I think the threshold is different for everyone. There are people who won’t settle down until every piece of gear they own is top of the line and Reddit approved and there are people who don’t give a shit if their cable crackles if it moves a certain way. I put myself in the middle. I don’t really care about the proven quality or name brand of whatever I’m using, and I just make sure it works 100% of the time whenever possible. I make an exception on pickups, cables and power supplies because I think those are the most important part of the equation for me personally. I’ll always use the best I can find, and I decide what is best by putting it to use and seeing how it performs.
Your feature on the Rainbow Machine focuses on the usability of weird pedals. Have you designed something so weird that it is truly unusable?
Personally, I don’t find the Rainbow Machine to be so weird, but a lot of other people do, so we ran with that. I know the “pixie trails” function of the Magic switch is obnoxious, but I think it’s cool. There are way weirder pedals out there, lol. I’ve definitely designed things that I thought were cool but not exactly functional in every setting, but I usually work to make them more multi-dimensional. There’s only one that I’ve been working on for a really long time that has a million controls with minimal functionality. I’m not sure I’ll ever finish it but it’s (kind of) fun to keep trying once or twice a year when the mood strikes.
Are there any guitars that you’re completely satisfied with and won’t continue to modify? It seems like for gear people (myself included), a piece of gear will operate at 99% of its maximum potential, but the search for that 1% will make your brain itch forever and lead to continued modification.
No, I constantly modify all of my guitars lol. I change pickups a lot, more than anyone should. The closest I think I’ve gotten to “perfection” would be my stock Nash Telecaster and a heavily modded Fender Jazzmaster. The Jazzmaster is a 60th anniversary that I gutted and replaced almost everything except the neck and body. It has Seymour Duncan custom shop ’59 humbuckers for Jazzmaster with 500K push/pull pots for coil tapping and the rhythm circuit is removed. It also has locking tuners, a Mastery vibrato, bridge, and string tree. It still feels too new, but it sounds perfect.
Your Reverb “Does This Work?” interview focuses on old effects and their tendency to break down over time. What are the typical things that cause old circuits to stop working?
In my experience it has been dust, humidity, and neglect resulting in bad switches, corroded solder joints, cracked wires and dried caps. I never get around to fixing my old gear though. I’ll get in there if I really want to use something, but I’ll usually turn it over to Joe Golden, our in-house repair wizard. Most of the broken gear in the Reverb video is still broken…
Two of my favorite EQD pedals are the Tentacle and the Acapulco Gold, if not simply because there are one/no options to choose from when getting sounds. I tend to get freaked out when I see a pedal that has 4+ knobs, which is something I’m working on, haha. Where do you draw the line when it comes to simplicity vs. versatility when designing pedals?
I used to have a “whatever it takes” approach to design as long as it wasn’t confusing for the general user, but I’ve been moving towards a “less is more” approach. I don’t think pedals should require hours of reading manuals and menu diving to use. The faster you can get to making actual music the better. That’s not to say I don’t have some elaborate, sometimes confusing, products in the pipeline but I’m generally leaning towards simple design.
Don’t mean to be a bummer, but I have to ask — how has the pandemic affected EQD’s business operations? If I understand correctly — it seems like your builders are assembling pedals at home?
We have taken the pandemic very seriously. We knew the shutdown was coming and some of our employees had already been working to get things in place to make the transition to home building as easy as we could. We had almost 50 employees working from home for almost three months and the production capacity was greatly reduced. We didn’t ship any product for about two months. We kept all the employees on the payroll and had regular Zoom meetings to keep everyone up to date on what we were doing. Now, as of June 16, 2020, we are still mostly working from home but we have a skeleton crew in the shop so we can populate PCB’s more efficiently and start shipping product. We completely rearranged the shop to spread people out and invested a lot of time and money into making it a safe and sanitary workspace. We have gone above and beyond all the recommended protocols — too many precautions to list. It would be very hard to catch any illness inside EQD now.
Do you have a favorite “Let’s Go!” guitar riff? For example, whenever I’m driving and “Unchained” comes on the radio, I dime the volume and start driving like a complete lunatic.
I’m pretty reserved but, oddly enough, “Unchained” is also one of my favorite riffs ever! I think I play it at least once every time I pick up a guitar. Also a big fan of “Siberian Khatru” by Yes once it kicks in. Same with “In the Light” and “Rain Song” by Led Zeppelin and anything on Sonic Youth’s Sister. I guess these are more riffs that I wish I wrote than riffs that make me lose my shit. I guess most of them also make me sound like a real dad rocker too.
Is there a piece of gear you’ve spent a completely stupid amount of money on simply because you had to have it?
Yes, a Sunn Model T and it was worth every penny! It’s the most perfect amp I’ve ever owned.
Not asking you to talk smack, but do you have a “Dumbest Pedal Ever Designed” award in your head?
I’ll keep my mouth shut on this one.
Finally, have you been through D.C. while touring or seeing shows? Anything about D.C. venues or the music scene in general you’d like to share?
I’ve been through D.C. about six or seven times, maybe more. I’ve always held D.C. in high regard because of Dischord records and bands like Ignition, Bad Brains, Jawbox, Fugazi, etc. 9:30 Club is actually one my favorite venues ever. I’ve been through twice when I was tour managing and the staff was super friendly and accommodating, which is unfortunately rare in the touring world. It also has the best green room of any venue I ever worked in; the bunks are a nice touch!
