The Earworm Podcast - Episode 6 Pedal Boards w/ Greg Walton Xact Tone Solutions

On episode six of The Earworm Podcast, Bryan and Patrick sit down with Greg Walton, founder of XTS, to explore the art, science, and obsession behind guitar tone. Greg shares his journey from guitar enthusiast and environmental consultant to building custom pedalboards and effects for some of the world’s top musicians. The conversation dives into the rise of boutique pedals, the founding of LA Sound Design and XTS, and how collaborations with artists helped shape the company into a respected name in the gear world.

The episode also breaks down the psychology of tone chasing, the challenges of designing rigs for artists like The Edge and Carrie Underwood, and the creative process behind developing pedals like the Winford Drive. Along the way, the group debates underrated guitarists, dream “desert island” guitars, favorite records, and the evolving guitar community in Nashville. Equal parts gear deep-dive and musician hang, the episode celebrates the endless pursuit of inspiration through sound, creativity, and great playing.

Check out www.xacttone.com for Greg and Barry's services and cool pedals!

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:36

Welcome to Earworm episode six. Today we're talking about pedal boards. We have a very special guest. It'll be our first interview for the show. Uh Mr. Greg Walton. Thank you for being here.

SPEAKER_01 0:46

Thank you for inviting me. I'm I'm flattered to be here today.

SPEAKER_03 0:50

May I think of nobody else. So for those of you who don't know, Greg is the owner of XTS, which is the preeminent pedal board maker. And they also design and build incredible pedals, too. So they are honestly the lifeblood for the majority of session musicians in Nashville. Anytime I'm dreaming up something crazy, I always call Greg and like, hey, can we do this? Or is this kind of weird? And they kind of go, Brian, no. And then let us show you how to do it.

SPEAKER_02 1:21

Well, thanks for being here, Greg. We really appreciate you taking the time out. Everybody's busy. It's a crazy world right now. So I guess the first question is like, give us your origin story, man. Like uh I know you're from Texas, but tell us about tinkering and you know growing up in music.

SPEAKER_01 1:34

Yeah, I mean it all started as a kid with a love for music, a love for guitar. I had an uncle that was a guitar player, had an old, like a 60s strat that he for some reason traded in for an ovation guitar at some point. But who did that? I remember I remember seeing that strat around my grandmother's house forever. And uh and it just that strat, that image was burned in my brain. And then I mean, years later, the music I learned about was like uh Clapton with like the slow hand record and and so forth was was a big deal. The Almond Brothers was a big deal. Uh Steve Miller. I mean, I think if I look back at what pushed me to play guitar, it was that riff on keep on rocking me, baby, you know, that that uh that riff for some reason did something permanently to the to the brain. So going through and and loving music forever, and uh I remember as a as a kid having my dad cut out like plywood stratocasters and stuff. So it was always for whatever reason it was always a Stratocaster. But I I was late to the party like playing. I w I didn't get into really playing until I was 19. Didn't start really playing live until I was in my mid to latter twenties. And in Houston, there was plenty of places to play. I was in the the southeastern side of Houston, so Clear Lake was a big deal, and there was a lot of bars and so forth like that. So you could stay busy. I mean, in Nashville, even to play on Broadway, the level of player you have to be is is otherworldly.

SPEAKER_02 3:11

You know, yeah, it's everybody that plays in Nashville, is they didn't necessarily come here to play on Broadway. These were people that were playing session studios and playing with big artists, and they were everybody moved here. Songwriters, really great players. So it's insane to go to Broadway and just the level of musicianship is just out of control. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_01 3:29

It's like being in the one o'clock jazz band at North Texas. You don't go there to learn how to play guitar. You go there to to just master it and and and craft what you are as a player and so forth.

SPEAKER_03 3:40

Aaron Ross Powell, you go there to let horn players know that you can play guitar. Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 3:47

So I've learned how to put together pedal boards, I learned how to put together rack rigs. I have a really good friend that kind of brought me into all of that. His name is John Ziegler. He was uh, you know, he showed me what great gear was, he showed me the very first Tyler guitar that I ever played, a James Tyler guitar. It was his Mike Landau signature uh vomit uh uh Studio Elite thing. And that night that I remember playing that guitar, we had several vintage guitars, vintage tellies and strats in, and that guitar, for some reason, just took the cake that night. But I learned a lot of gear through him, you know, things about gear through him, and then started helping people like my friend Kenny Cordray, that was a great player around Houston, would help him put his pedal boards together, my friend Kirk McKim that played with Pat Travers for a long time, and now he's out with um Billy Bob Thornton and his band. So he's he stayed pretty active. So there was developed a number of friends that I would help them with their gear, kept my own gear up. And then when I started tinkering on pedals, again, a friend of mine taught me, uh my friend Luther taught me how to not be afraid of a soldering iron. Learning to craft uh was trying to help guys get their sounds. You know, they would come to me, this is what I'm envisioning this board sounding like, but this pedal sounds weak, and this one is not getting it. And at the time you didn't have all of the boutique builders that you do now.

SPEAKER_03 5:16

Can I interrupt I want to ask you a question about that? So with with it John's sort of influence on you and sort of you knowing gear, because that's that's glossing over a huge thing. I mean, that education of like understanding the difference between a a plexi and a Vox, or let alone a space echo or uh a rotosound photo. I mean, tell us a little bit about that, because that's interesting to me. Like, if I came to you back in the day and I was like, I c this isn't working for me just as those guys were. Right. How did you know what to fix or what to sculpt?

SPEAKER_01 5:52

Aaron Ross Powell That's interesting because one of the things that uh I also have to give John a lot of credit for is ear calibration. He were he had a couple of bands that he played in. They had a really nice rehearsal studio. He had monies to buy really nice gear, you know. So he had a he had a 68 Plexy superbass amplifier. I know what a I learned what a 68 superbass Plexy Marshall sounds like on nine.

SPEAKER_00 6:21

Right.

SPEAKER_01 6:22

And then on seven, and then putting a tube screamer through it. What does that sound like? How does the feel change? Even even though I'm not anywhere close to the player that that John is or or a lot of guys are, I could get the feel of things and and how it excited the ear and so forth. Aaron Ross Powell, Jr.

SPEAKER_02 6:40

I think that's a very cool education. You know, learning those things and seeing how your ear responds to it and how you're hearing it. And the little nuances just between volumes is just that time that you spend with those amplifiers is just so invaluable because it teaches you not only about that amplifier, but about the way that you hear that amplifier. So I think that's really cool.

SPEAKER_01 6:59

Trevor Burrus, Jr.: And going from, you know, in a in an evening where we we'd get these big like tone parties together where there would be eight or ten of us, and we'd bring out an old 60s, uh like a 60 uh an early 60s Vox AC30, and then we would have a tweed deluxe, and then we would have deluxe reverbs and Princeton Reverbs and Plexley Marshalls. Exactly.

SPEAKER_03 7:26

We should bid make this a new thing. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_01 7:30

And being able to go in there and hear all of that stuff and feel it, you know, you start to your ears start to get calibrated. So when you when you'd go out and friends would say, Yeah, this isn't really what you know I'm after, this seems weak or stuff, and I could go go to pedals and say, yeah, that does kind of sound weak. And at the time, Robert Keeley was in Oklahoma and he was doing a bunch of pedal mods. I mean, I had him modding uh Ibanez compressors, tube screamers, blues drivers. He was doing a lot of modifications. Once the his compressor took off and and it what seemed he got busier with his own production of a product, then um there was not all the availability to get uh modded pedals out at that point in time. And I'm I'm not even really sure what year that was. It was somewhere in the 90s, you know, that that that that happened.

SPEAKER_03 8:23

Aaron Powell Was Keely, just to hit on that a little bit, was Keeley doing, when you were calling him and saying, hey, look, I need these these pedals modded, was he even considering like Keely as we know him to be now as a as a company making those pedals? Because those Keeley compressors was such a big part of late 90s and all the way through the 2000, almost to 2011, that compressor was like on everybody's board. You had to have a Keeley compressor and a tube screamer and a little bit of slapback delay and a telly if you wanted to play in there. So it was like a, you know.

SPEAKER_01 8:57

I think that before there was that compressor, there were there was was a lot of modifications going on. But yeah, when that compressor took off, I guess the the people that were modding were now uh populating circuit boards and doing things for the compressor. I don't know that for a fact, but uh it seemed like the production had to shift into the pedal, the product versus all of the modifications. So what that forced me to do was how do I get the modifications done? At that point, um R. G. Keen was uh someone that would would uh had a website and shared information, and uh Brian Wampler had published like a booklet of a PDF booklet, you know, for a for a blues driver. Here's the Brent Mason mod, here's the this mod, here's the that mod. And then I would use my ears to go, okay, well I know this is going to and I did it, you know, like now I can I can ask Barry, who is the the engineer at Exact Tone Solutions, I can ask him, hey, what's going to happen if I if I change this cap value? Because I'm I'm just doing it from rote. I mean I'm self-taught. And he can tell me exactly why it's doing whatever, but I would just change values until it sounded right to me. And typically that worked. Actually doing the pedal mods and stuff is what for Kenny Cordray and doing boards for him got me introduced to Dave Seabrie, Austin School of Music, great player there in Austin, huge, uh uh very influential. I think you worked at the Austin School of Music for a while, right?

SPEAKER_05 10:38

I did, I tied some guitar there.

SPEAKER_01 10:40

Meeting Dave and then getting into the Austin crowd, another person that I learned a ton about rig-wise and so forth, is Dave Friedman at Rack Systems. I'd go to LA to visit my friend John, and I'd my fortunately for me, I could go, I I worked in LA doing environmental stuff. So the other half of my life is being an environmental consultant where I helped help people comply with air law. And uh but I'd go to LA to do one of my environmental gigs, and then I'd stay a week out there and got to know um uh Dave Friedman, and you know, Dave would tell me, Why don't you try doing a few pedals of your own and so forth, and and he kind of gave me some ideas. I picked that up, and I think Dave Seabrie still has the very first pedal I ever did. Wow. And it's still on one of his boards. And uh I learned really quickly, you don't give away the you know, you don't sell or give away the first production pedal of of anything that you do. Getting into um kind of doing those pedals led me to um, you know, led me into meeting a a bunch of the the Austin-based people, Steven Bruton, um Van Wilkes, you know, the I did pedals for both of those guys. And then it kind of morphed into the mid-2000s. There was a couple of us that created a a business there called uh LA Sound Design. I was in Houston and decided that I think I wanted to do this. And again, it was I always wanted to do a business where racks and pedal boards and putting gear together for you know, for not only local guys but for touring guys and so forth was uh, you know, became kind of uh you know, something I really wanted to do. So LA sound design was was one of those. And you know, Dave Friedman was really busy. You know, there was uh I think the Bradshaw, you know, uh was doing product lines and so forth. So there was a kind of a uh a void that we could fill that that's go ahead.

SPEAKER_03 12:55

No, I was gonna I was just gonna say I'm just thinking back on it. I mean, like you kind of were in uh in the epicenter or the sweet spot of just sort of like because the names that you're mentioning, besides the I was about to say the professional circle there is amazing, but also like you guys were sort of the the real uh I guess at the cutting that first set of waves of the boutique pedal and the design and everything else, because everything else, if you wanted a pedal, you know, you bought a boss or you bought a Ross or you did a you know what I mean? Like you there were certain brands that were large big box retailers, and this was shooting all that. So you had Keely and then you have Wampler, and then you've got you're in the mix of all this stuff, and then you've got you know Dave Friedman, and then you have all the players that you're sort of getting not only in LA, but also back home, you know, in Austin.

SPEAKER_00 13:45

Right.

SPEAKER_03 13:46

And and everybody's kind of paying attention and trying to figure out what that next that next thing, the it, is going to be.

SPEAKER_01 13:52

Right. And uh and just having those relationships, like being able to know Dave Friedman that I got to know through my friend John, to get to know Scott Henderson, that an amazing player of just the tribal tech.

SPEAKER_02 14:12

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:14

Just an out-of-this world player. Being able to provide him with stuff up front, you know, developing those relationships, and then developing the relationships with people in Austin, and it just kind of mushroom from there. So it started really small, but it took on uh a lot of heat, knowing how busy I was with the environmental company in Houston, the trek going back and forth, it was clear to me in about six or eight months that that was not a long-term solution. I kind of bowed out of that.

SPEAKER_02 14:47

But after at that point, sorry, uh how did you conceptualize what you were going to build? Was it you were getting input from artists or peers and you were making individual pedals and be like, this is the one that I like? Or was it coming from you going, hey, this is what I'm looking for in sound?

SPEAKER_01 15:03

How would those influences would come from from different players? Like, you know, one of the products that we did for a long time, we really don't do it anymore, was the Pegasus boost, which was basically a modified Olymbic Stratoblaster, which was what Lowell George had in his strats, and then became the input on the Dumble Amp. The FET, I believe, was an Olymbic stratoblaster circuit or uh a variation of. So and then Dave Phillips came to us with an idea about, you know, I really like this boost that became the Tejas boost, which was like an old um color sound uh power booster uh um and so forth. So some of those came along. Um, you know, guys would come to me, I man, I really need a high-end marsh, you know, like a modified marshall sound, something like Egnator or whatever, that what they were doing with the Marshall Circuit. And out of that sprung the atomic overdrive. Yeah. Um moving to Nashville, you had to do uh you had to do some kind of ODR circuit. So that's the Imperial Overdrive is our version of that. But we we would always exact hone solutions was that in all of those products that were again, the ODR always seemed to have a bit of base. Some of them had more than others, but you know, uh if anybody was complaining, they would be complaining about it maybe being a little too compressed, a little too bassy. And we had a we have we there's a toggle switch on that pedal to get rid of that. And then once we once we did the circuit and we got rid of a lot of that stuff, they go, you know, I'd like a little bit of it back. And so you know they invented togg God invented toggle switches for things like that. So that pedal, you know. And then we did the the preamp pedal that was like the atomic and the precision and the uh the uh Pegasus boost all in one pedal. So we did some of that. And then on the back side of that, uh by this time we had uh in 2011 is when exact tone solutions opened in Nashville in the very greater Berry Hill area. Um and that all came about was when I was doing the Tejas Boost. I needed some help like getting a printed circuit board done and so forth. And my friend Dave Phillips at LA Sound Design said, well, why don't you contact uh Bob O'Neill in Nashville and you know he's he's he helped me there when I because he went to uh Dave Phillips went to Belmont.

SPEAKER_06 17:50

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 17:50

And um so he he knew Nashville and some of the people that did gear work and Bob did. Bob helped people with gear uh during that time period that Dave was here. And then when I went and met with Bob, Barry O'Neill, who is now the engineer at at XTS and and helped open the doors and start the company and has been huge for what we can do as a company. Uh Barry is is essential to all of that. Um Barry helped was helping me with the Tejas boost, and then he helped me with uh the atomic overdrive. And then he and his father were doing Kingdom Amplifiers, which was uh a custom amplifier company. And then um for some reason that kind of went to the to the side and um in J Janu end of uh um 2010, we kind of started talking about, you know, should we try to do this rig building thing, you know, in Nashville? Because Dave Wilkerson that had been at Techstar here for for the for a long time was doing a lot of the big rack rigs and stuff here, and there wasn't that anymore as far as far as uh you know, some of the engineering things we can do that that Barry's able to do. Um so um you know, finally it we worked out how we were going to do it. We found a place, we opened the doors in January. There was a lot of crickets for the first couple of years. But it seemed like pretty soon we had and it started with like uh Guthrie Trapp one day calling, Hey, I got these boss pedals that that have an issue. You know, can I come in and and get you guys to fix them? And we had do some pedal repairs, and then there was uh Ryan Warner was was one of the first clients in, uh Jed Hughes, um great players. Amazing players. Um and so we started to word of mouth. I mean, in Nashville, everything gets seems to get done by word of mouth uh until somebody says, hey, you need to go see these guys. And that still happens today. You know, we've been here for almost six completed a sixteenth year, and we still have people come in, wow, we just thought you did pedals. We didn't know you did rings or what it's always word of mouth that that kind of and and now, you know, Instagram and uh we have a lot of people out there, you know, Tom Bukovac's um his uh you know his YouTube channel has brought a lot of people to to us and so forth.

SPEAKER_02 20:32

So um that's who came to you and said the craziest thing and you were like, I don't know, okay, we'll figure it out. Oh man, this is gonna be good.

SPEAKER_01 20:42

I don't I don't know the for me personally. Now, we've done some rig stuff that uh, you know, a few years ago, um I g this was pretty early on, and they're still using the racks today. This had to be eight, nine, ten years ago. Carrie Underwood we knew Sean Tubbs, or we s know Sean Tubbs, and Sean Tubbs got us a a shot at doing some rigs for them. They were going to be in the round, and um they couldn't have they couldn't be tethered, the players couldn't be tethered to two rigs. So and they w uh they wanted to go to fractals uh to where everything was it ended up being a 40-space rack, two 20-space racks in the same cabinet, you know, which if that would have gone off the back of the truck the wrong way, show wouldn't have happened, you know. Uh and so we had little we had we did smaller rigs for them that could have flown and that they they could use for travel and so forth. But that rig, during during rehearsals, they had the foot controllers for the fractals and stuff for doing the sound changes and so forth. And there was a computer taking all of that data and cataloging it and So that when they were playing live, computer was making all the changes to the rigs. So the all of the rehearsal stuff where they were doing the changes in real time and working the treadles in in real time.

SPEAKER_03 22:11

Right.

SPEAKER_01 22:12

That was all being recorded and then played back in the live page.

SPEAKER_02 22:17

That's awesome. Trevor Burrus Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:19

To where all the player had to do was have his wireless pack and his instrument and play his parts, and then they had done the work in pre-production to get everything down.

SPEAKER_02 22:35

And they just have a set list time coded, right? Yeah. That's incredible. I I remember reading about the edge, because he had done that several years ago, where he was like, I want to automate everything, everything's my tech's responsibility, and all I have to do is put on my guitar and go play. And it's like that's so cool.

SPEAKER_01 22:53

It's like that's what they did for that tour. And again, they couldn't be tethered because of the the you know the particulars of the show and so forth, the production of the show. Right. Um and you um as we were talking before we started um the Bonavir rig for Justin. The pedal board on that was all RJM stuff that we did, and we have a good relationship with those guys, and that that and you know, the the gig rig stuff or killer for automating things and so forth. Carrie Underwood was probably one of the more unique rigs that that we've done. Another thing is uh Russ Paul coming to us and and um we created some stuff where he could use the um a synth with his steel guitar and do some of the things that he was doing.

SPEAKER_03 23:49

Aaron Ross Powell So Russ is is got a thing with us with Modern Music Masters, but uh when we did the Paul Franklin pedal steel camp in 2020, he did his whole thing where he came out and he you know did the whole vocoder almost the synth. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 24:06

Yeah. So he's so coming uh we've done a few things like that where you know a guy comes to us and and again the the the heavy lifting is you know, Barry does all of the heavy lifting with with how do we technically make all this stuff happen. One of the things I'll say too is that you know, if something is isn't going to work or it's not gonna be cost effective to do even some of us doing repairs on pedals and stuff, you know, if it's not gonna make financial sense, Barry's really good about saying, hey, you know, this could we're you know X amount an hour and this may take four hours to do it, you can buy a new one for, you know, half of that. Uh we're really good about doing that and being practical with the guys that are making a living doing it. Because it's hard enough to make a living in the music business now. Sure. And being being able to being frugal for our our clientele as well is is a plus.

SPEAKER_02 25:10

I think that's extraordinarily awesome. Uh I think sounds like it's a very collaborative process when you're dealing with any artist. Absolutely. Um I was gonna this is kind of a question for both of you is you've obviously worked together on what, four pedal boards at this point. Yep. Could you describe the collaborative the collaboration process there?

SPEAKER_03 25:30

Yeah, uh I basically, at least the way it works for me, is I'll kind of get an idea of kind of what I'm looking for, and then I go in and go visit with Greg and Barry, and I'm like, hey, um this is what I'm thinking. Is this possible? And then they usually just kind of laugh at me and then go, yeah, we'll do it. Or, you know, or like, no, dude. You know, so sometimes I've come in with some really stupid ideas, but I believe that. Yeah. So but uh but most of the time it's like that, or I'll like, I'll I'll measure out, you know, like okay, I've got these pedals, will it fit on what form factor? Or the or we're gonna cut you a new one. And then I think about the signal flow, and then we sit around and bat around, like, okay, if we put your impressor here, is that gonna be before the effects loop? Yes. Do you want to what do you want in your effects loop in the order? You know, it gets really technical really fast. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_01 26:18

Yeah. And Barry and Eric, I I mostly have been on the business end of things most of the time because I've been back and forth between Houston. So uh Barry and Eric are in the office every day of the week. I'm not. And you know, and they they again they do the heavy lifting. The interesting thing is, though, there's enough love for the instrument and the love for music between all of us that at first glance it may not look like it's possible to be done, or maybe not be cost effective or whatever. You know, I think we've actually told people that we can't do that, and then a few weeks later going, oh yeah, we've found this product that's going to allow that to happen.

SPEAKER_03 27:05

Right. And that that's that's happened to me before, too. And I've I have to mention Eric because yeah, he's he's the guy that a lot of times Typically what it is on a normal pedal design, I'll come in, I'll have a whole box full of pedals, and then I'll say, Here's a here's what we want to do, and then Barry and Eric go do their magic spells and quotients and everything else like that, and then Greg and I just sit around and shoot the shit for like two and a half hours talking about great gigs and great albums and music and all the really fun stuff.

SPEAKER_02 27:35

Trevor Burrus, Jr. So how does one prepare for something like that? Let's say uh an artist is like, I need to get this done. How does that process start? Like what's the what's the kickoff?

SPEAKER_01 27:44

Um the kickoff is a consultation. So uh guys will come in and say they'll either bring in all of their toys or they'll we've had guys we've we've we've done consultations over the phone where a guy sends us uh three or four audio clips, and and maybe it's a Pink Lloyd song, or maybe it's uh you know a Hendrix tune or whatever. I want to make these sounds. You pick the pedals, you do all of that. So we've we've gotten from where we do everything, and that's you know, picking pedals based on the sounds that we heard and so forth. And that's a collaborative effort uh between all of us. Hey, what do you think will do this best and so forth? And you know, Eric's been a professional tech for years as well, on the road with people and so forth. So even live when we're looking at how is this gonna work for the techs? How is this gonna work for the the uh production manager and stuff, for guys that are doing um utility stuff, you may be working with a number of different players in in you know, front of house. You may be dealing with uh anyway, there's there's more complexity with that.

SPEAKER_02 28:57

And then I was like even the marketing part department from Warner might get involved and say, no, you can't have that on stage, you know, for the for the show, you know?

SPEAKER_01 29:07

Yeah, I mean we've we've had to do interesting things to get certain rigs done and buy off and and so forth from from uh the production, you know, getting, okay, who's gonna pay for this? And you know, and and uh we're really good about um so guy comes in, let's just say he plays in the church on Sunday in Jackson, Mississippi. And he may come in and you know, drive in and tell us what he's looking to do, and then we'll do that rig just like we would do the rig for Tom Bukovac or Derek Wells or Rob McNally, as far as the attention to detail, what the ins and outs need to be, what what are what are what's going to give him the tools that he needs to be as successful as he can be, you know? Um can't ever get around this, you know. I I keep looking for the magic talent pedal for myself and uh haven't found it yet. But uh there's a lot of love for guitar in the shop. I will say this. Uh Eric's the one that really plays, you know, for for me, sitting on the couch a lot of days doing work. Um it's actually I I'll I'll go, you know, I probably should be paying a cover charge for this, you know. Um he's such a great player. And that goes into the fact that he can do so much playing-wise is is another thing that gives us an advantage of of when we're doing videos and stuff like that, but also getting a feel for is it gonna work, is it not gonna work.

SPEAKER_03 30:47

Aaron Ross Powell Yeah. What do you think's changed like you know, you've been doing this a long time now, and pedals come and go.

SPEAKER_00 30:55

Right.

SPEAKER_03 30:56

And it seems like there's an endless avalanche of pedals. Right? The churn factor is is exquisitely high. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_00 31:03

Right.

SPEAKER_03 31:04

So when you come out with a new pedal, what typically do you have to set your sights on and go, this is a realistic expectation of how long this this pedal will probably be in the guitar player public eye?

SPEAKER_01 31:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 31:20

Is there one or is or what are the challenges?

SPEAKER_01 31:23

The challenges are your first run of pedals. Let's just say a manufacturer that's doing, you know, you've got uh Wampler that's doing a lot of stuff. Robert Keeley has released uh, you know, uh a number of things that are really, really good. I mean, the Halo delay that Keeley introduced is a really killer delay. Uh but even with that, as killer as a product as it is, and it's one of my favorite delays ever, because it like a PCM42, 2290, some of the old rat gear, it washed like a reverb versus really saying I'm a delay. It it had a certain ambience to it that was kind of got smeared as the repeats started to happen.

SPEAKER_03 32:11

Right. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 32:11

And the Halo is beautiful in doing that. But you know, uh you and I had talked uh a couple of weeks ago about pedals and so forth. It's you know, it's probably a six to eight month run, like the first few batches of pedals is probably where you're gonna sell eighty, ninety percent of what you do. We have been horrible at uh at coming up with a pedal design and then it hits our Instagram page and then it's for sale. You know, we've we haven't ever done the marketing the way that we've wanted to do. And we have several things in the queue that have been seven or eight years that we should have released them for whatever reason, and that's on me. It just hasn't happened. The pandemic happened and that was uh that kept a few things from getting out. But uh I have to follow my sword saying that some of that stuff is just on me. We've done things very behind the scenes, very slowly. They got into a the hands of players like Scott and so forth. We've never really done huge production runs other than a few. Uh but I think for the challenging thing for any pedal manufacturer, especially if you're doing it on a small scale, is if you come up with an idea and you know, probably the first few runs, the first six months, then then they the the public, the guitar-buying public, pedal buying public is probably going to be on to the next thing, whatever that is. Especially with overdrives, it's flavor of the month.

SPEAKER_02 33:49

It's easy to get lost, too, in the sheer amount that there are. I mean, we went uh we went to a store uh in Nashville a couple of weeks ago, and it's an entire pedal store. There's a few guitars, a few amps, but it's it's all pedals. And I could see anybody going in there, you have just this uh fatigue of choice, right? There's just so much so much to choose from and so many to play. And after a while, if you're just testing overdrives for a day, you're like, these all sound the same. Even though they don't, you just the ear fatigue, the the the choice fatigue, there's just a lot. There's just so many out there, it's it's hard to decide, you know?

SPEAKER_00 34:25

Right.

SPEAKER_03 34:25

I think when you really get into pedals, there is a there it's such a it's such an easier metric, I think, in a way, of measurement of tone than like amps. Because the amps have too many moving there's too many uh there's too much entropy like uh with tubes and with transformers and everything else. And everything that's been condensed into a pedal that can just fit in your back pocket, so to speak. It's a little bit more of it's a clearer way to evaluate kind of what you're hearing than it is if you're just trying to like you've got if you had thirty plexies, that would be difficult because they would sound radically different. Like you couldn't you can't quite split hairs. It's the same with vintage microphones or vintage guitars, you know, like especially for acoustic guitars, pre-war Martins and so on and so forth. I mean, not everyone is a 10 out of 10.

SPEAKER_00 35:21

Right? No.

SPEAKER_03 35:22

Right?

SPEAKER_00 35:23

No.

SPEAKER_03 35:23

I mean, we've played I've played a 59 Paul that I was like, meh, my Murphy lab from you know 2018 is better sounding than this. And through no fault of its own. But it's just like that's just the way it got made that day, brother. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 35:38

They don't make them like they used to. Right. Right. Right. I mean, again, the Martin, that's a really great example, is every guitar that they made pre-war, especially every guitar sounded different.

SPEAKER_03 35:47

I mean, I guess you run into that with pedals because you only buy a limited stock of components.

SPEAKER_01 35:51

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 35:52

And your values, right? And you've probably wrestled with that.

SPEAKER_01 35:55

Yes. I actually did this thing. Um Dave Phillips has a precision overdrive I did for him that um he has affectionately uh labeled it as clap tone.

SPEAKER_03 36:10

Nice. That's a cool thing.

SPEAKER_01 36:11

So it has it has that pedal sounds like cream. It really does. Sounds like a lot of those things, those those sounds that were coming out of Marshalls giving it up and amps just giving it up. And that pedal sounds great. So I took that pedal. I had even had to lift some of the, you know, like half the component out of the circuit to get a good reading on it, and found out what every cap did, every value was for the cap, what they actually read on a meter, every resistor, what it met on a re what it read on a meter, um, every res uh potentiometer, how it read on the meter. And I did, I think it was 30, 3550 pedals, precision overdrives, which you know, which uh have the screamer-based topology to it, you know. Um and I went in trying to create, and I kept that pedal until I got this whole experiment done. And again, every resistor was the same, every capacitor was the same value, um, pots and so forth. I got all of them done, they were all different. Some had a little more bass, some had a little more mid-range, some were had a little more brightness. And for different players, that would absolutely be their thing. Uh it's a little bright for me. Right. Yeah, for you, it may be perfect depending on what amp you're running it through or what your application is. But that really taught me, and I I did another experiment years before that with um exotic AC booster pedals, where um where I put 10 or 12 of them together. And all of those sounded a little different. You know, and again, you know, you put all the pots values at noon. What does that mean? Well, the pot values are all the way the pots were made are all different. So noon on one may be one o'clock on on the other. So as you're dialing them in, there's a there's this dance of, okay, where does the gain value need to be? Does it need to be two o'clock on this one where it was 12 o'clock on that one? So as you do those those taste tests and so forth, you absolutely find that to really and this will is going to really piss off retailers as far as you know, especially smaller retailers. I always tell guys, go in and find five or six and sit there and listen to them. Or maybe buy, maybe off a reverb, uh buy ten of them and then sit down and figure out which one works for you, and then launch the others. Yeah. Uh because they're all a little different. And it's amps the same way. Guitars the same way. Totally. Um you know, you gotta find the one that you know, and on guitars it could be just a little bit of a setup variation would have made it a world of difference.

SPEAKER_03 39:09

Totally. Or it's sometimes it's even uh it's even a string change. Like I've I'll I'll you know, I'll switch uh alloy changes for guitar. You know, like I may go to half wounds or I may just do pure nickel or I maybe do a a nickel, right? And some, especially with vintage guitars, I've I I've noticed that there's a big difference. And when I settle on that string that I think it inspires me. Because that we're all after that, right? There's no there's no right or wrong.

SPEAKER_00 39:38

Right.

SPEAKER_03 39:39

There's no objective criteria that we can check off.

SPEAKER_02 39:42

How do you measure mojo? How do you measure magic? You can't.

SPEAKER_03 39:44

But you know it when you experience it. Right. And I think that that's what we're after. Whatever gives the player that so whenever I find a string combination and I start with that and work my way through the signal chain, I'm like, that's that guitar for me. I want to have those strings on it because consistently I get inspired.

unknown 40:02

Right.

SPEAKER_03 40:03

I get inspired when I put it in my hands, as opposed to like, well, this is the coolest string. It's balanced tension in YXL or whatever, you know, some new or it's blue. Remember when they Dean Markley did the blue strings.

SPEAKER_00 40:15

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_03 40:15

Yeah, that's that's seared into my brain. I can't get it out.

SPEAKER_02 40:19

The rainbow ones from DR? Right. Oh, even better.

SPEAKER_03 40:21

Yeah, and like you're like, okay. And of course they sound like they look. But you know, but basically you you waste a lot of time going, well, is this the magic sauce? Am I missing something? And then you put them on, you're like, no. Okay, let me go back to whatever. And it's kind of cool because we settle in a way, we settle on what we like, and it's all about the inspiration. And and pedals, I think, are that thing that everybody's always looking for, new inspiration.

SPEAKER_00 40:48

Right.

SPEAKER_03 40:48

And amps and and all of the thing. I think that's what's fueling this whole industry in a lot of ways.

SPEAKER_02 40:53

And I think the I think uh effect pedals in general, or just really effects, but effect pedals really can emphasize uh your inspiration, if that makes a lot of sense. It's like it's a very big part. I get inspired by with the new pedal. I'm playing different, I'm listening different, I'm trying new things every time. And it's every pedal. So everyone that comes through. So it's cool to think about it that way where they're all individual units with this little magic that you can't really can't really measure or control for that matter.

SPEAKER_03 41:24

Yeah. So when we look at tolerances, because we we get into it, because I guess you you know you've probably reached that bell curve, like in any of your production runs that you've done, if you do 30 pedals.

SPEAKER_00 41:35

Right.

SPEAKER_03 41:36

There's probably a bell curve in there where you're like, you know, majority of the pedals are fitting well within this. That's the tone. Do you ever uh thin the herd out from the outliers or just push them back on the shelves a little bit and go, you know, these didn't make w whatever it is that you were looking for. Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_05 41:54

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 41:55

Oh yeah. I mean, I've had um just the precision overdrive pedal. I've I've had a few that were just too bright or are just too uh too bassy. You know, there was it was like putting a blanket over, you know, the the amplifier. And um with those I you know jerked the circuit board out and and started over, you know. Right. Um didn't have to lose the enclosure, which is expensive and and some of the other parts. But the circuit board itself, you know, tossed it, put another circuit board in, and it was it was it fell back into line with what our with with what our specs are for it and so forth. Um you brought up uh an interesting point too that I I want to you know circle back around is um we've had guys come to us and on their pedal board the delay was the first thing in the chain.

SPEAKER_03 42:54

First thing.

SPEAKER_01 42:55

Yeah. I'm paraphrasing to a little, but their their their signal chain was very different from what you would normally think would work. Yeah. Because you put an a an overdrive after a delay and you you're gonna exaggerate the delay because of the gain that's happening after the delay. So we would always put delays and tremolos and reverbs and stuff at the end of the chain, and you know, probably univibes, um, octofuzzes at the very beginning, then compressors, and then go through overdrives and you know the preempt stuff, put a volume pedal in there somewhere. But I think Barry's line was always a man with experience is never at the mercy of a man with an opinion. Uh if it works for you, then don't let us tell you any different. Because and and we've actually kind of scratched our heads a few times over the years on, well, that's not what's typical that we would do. That's not the way I would run my board. But this guy's playing 220 dates a year. He's playing a lot more than I am, so uh my opinion means nothing. Right. But it's it's it's it's that's the interesting thing of finding something. You know, we've had guys teach us a ton. You know, we've again we we have guys that are amazing players, outstanding players, know absolutely nothing about their gear. You know, just you know, we're we want I want you to do the board, you do your thing. We get that a lot. And of course we've done so many boards now, and I mean I think I don't know how many solder joints Eric has done to this point, but they've it's got to be getting close to a million solder joints. He's done so many. Um But um every now and then, you know, we'll we'll learn something from from somebody that may have what we consider very little experience. Uh at a they used to have these shows in town, which would be at the Preston Hotel, right? Where every floor of the hotel was taken up by an amp maker or guitar maker or whatever.

SPEAKER_02 45:03

I miss those days.

SPEAKER_01 45:04

I do too. Like a mini name show.

SPEAKER_02 45:05

It was a yeah, room name shows.

SPEAKER_01 45:07

Yeah. And then, you know, a lot of a couple of times they had Jack Pearson come and play a show, and then, you know, and that's an an experience all to its own. And um but when we were there, we we had just done the Winford Drive. And uh Chris Miller is a friend of ours. He's uh been Keith's tech for years and years, and is a great tech, can do everything that we do, that we would do for Keith, you know, and he's he's he's a great tech. And um so we told him as we would do things for them here and there, we'd tell, okay, if there's anything that Keith ever needs, you know, don't don't be, don't hesitate to ask. And he came in one day with a big rat pedal, a big box rat pedal. Okay. And uh and Chris said, Well, this is, you know, an idea would be for this to work with more guitars, you know. This only works with certain things at at its best, you know. So how can we do different things? So we took that idea and um then we started working on it, basically a rat uh topology, you know, and uh we found that once you started really getting the gain up, that it would, for lack of a better way to phrase that, would kind of fart out. You know, it would get the gain would get loose and get tubby and so forth, and it would not as pleasing. So we we did this one what we called uh it was it's a presence control that's really the glass of the notes. You've got a tone control that can do bright and and and dark, you know, that can roll off high-end. Um but this presence knob could r can really clean it up on the Winford when it um when you get the gain up. And then we also put in a mid-range control that added mids, but uh not only mid-frequency, but mid-gain as well. Uh not a ton of gain, but but there's gains in the mids that's being added as you turn that up. So that cured a lot of ills. And uh still to today, if I have to take one overdrive pedal to a gig, if I had to just take one of what we do to a gig, uh it would probably be the Win for drive, because uh, you know, I would typically keep the gain below 10 o'clock or somewhere in that area. And but it can get fuzzy, it can get gainy, it can get Lukatherish kind of uh, you know, kind of gain and so forth. Um but that one really cleans up when you roll down the t the volume of the guitar. Once we got the pedal done, uh it took us about a year or so to really get it right. Uh Jed Hughes was really influential in coming in and listening, and he used it for a while and so forth, and he lent his ears to and we go when when Jed says it's done, then it's done. You know we had all these prototypes and so forth. So that was an interesting experience to to go through that process from, hey, again, we're looking for the solution, right? This is this is the problem, what can we do to uh to to solve the problem?

SPEAKER_05 48:18

Aaron Ross Powell Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 48:19

When you're kind of doing that and you're working with because I've got some ideas. Uh but like when you're of course you but like if you think about when you're working with someone, especially an artist that is as well known as Keith Urban is, and they come in with just sort of a soft ass, like, hey, can you make this a little more What was the reaction when you were able to sort of get it back to them and go, uh try this and see what happens?

SPEAKER_01 48:43

Well it typically I don't I don't know that we ever at least it wasn't for me. Again, I was in and out of Nashville. I don't know that I ever actually w was part of a session where Keith was sitting there playing it. We'd go hand it off to Chris and Chris would, you know, would uh make sure that it it got to Keith and oh well it needs more of this. And then the one thing that we had to do is there's one particular op amp that that is used in that particular pedal that you can't find the original rat pedals that you can't find anymore. Or if you do, they're b black market, they may be good, they may be not, they may not be, they could be counterfeits. So we said we have to find a part that if the apocalypse happened and there's only roaches and this part, this component, you know, left on Earth, this that's the component that we're looking for, that one that will be there forever. And so there was a challenge around getting that to work, because we had to change a bunch of parts and re-EQ it and so forth to get that particular component to work in the pedal. That's one of the things that took the longest in getting that to be ironed out. But trying to go to market with the vintage obsolete part would not have made sense at all in that. And that's, you know, nowadays everything is surface mount. It's hard to find the older components that people have used for years in in in doing things.

SPEAKER_02 50:21

So um, so that's funny because uh I was the my next question was going to be about trends.

SPEAKER_01 50:28

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 50:29

And you know, obviously there's there's we kind of mentioned earlier there's a lot of trends in pedals, right? And as a business like yours, you probably are you're looking at what's next, what's forward thinking, what is the next pedal that we're going to do. Is there anything that you can share with us that you guys are working on right now that maybe trying to spot a trend, trying to see what maybe the next thing is?

SPEAKER_01 50:51

I think that our our workload in uh again, I I go back to since 2020, you know, going through the the the changes that we all did as a as a country, different businesses and stuff in dealing with the pandemic. I think that our focus on the backside of that has been mostly on getting the rigs done and keeping people working and so forth. I think that this year, the first three months of this year, I think it's the busiest we've ever been. It's fantastic. I really do think it's the busiest we've ever been. I mean, we're uh I would have loved for Barry to have been here today as as part of this this interview. We'll get him on. We'll get him on. And it and it's just no, we have we have deadline commitments that if I even take the afternoon off to go do this, it's the you know, that it's gonna potentially impede one of those one of those deadline commitments and so forth. So um we have been really busy with that. We have a again, we do have several pedals in the can right now, as they would say in the in the recording industry. We have several things in the can um that we want to do the releases correct and so forth. And um and again, right now we're we're busy, there's one particular thing that we want to release in the near future, or a couple of things actually, but we want to be able to have the production to to be able to feel the the need that's there and so forth, but do some of the marketing stuff the right way. So that's kind of, yeah, there's a there's a few overdrive because we focused mostly on gains and we did a com the we do a compressor called the Fermata Compressor. A lot of guys that hate compression, what what they don't like is that the the top end, you know, the the high E, the B, the G will be fine. But once we get to the A and the E, it just gets too flubby. We created uh this particular pedal where there's one knob that actually controls how the bass is sensed in the pedal. I'm I know I'm probably not um Barry's gonna roll his eyes when he sees this, but it allows you to kind of set how the how, you know, when you start playing the low strings, how's the pedal going to see that?

SPEAKER_03 53:13

Yeah, so you can do a t uh uh almost a harmonic tilt as if it's almost like a side chain with a with a low pass filter or some some derivation of something like that. So it doesn't overexcite the compression circuit. You can tailor it.

SPEAKER_01 53:26

Yeah, exactly. And what's interesting is to see a player that uses compression and know that compression start on the low E, like maybe on on the with the open low E and go all the way down to the 12th fret high E. And the compression is changing with each string and and so forth to where it's um I don't know whether the phrase be more linear or not in getting to that. Um but that's kind of uh again, it's a it's a solution to a problem that that uh that certain guys don't, you know, there's a there's a few compressors out there that are really good and so forth, but to get it to where it balances with the way that the low end excites the compressor and so forth, it it it was a that was a challenge to to get done. And again, I don't I don't know that we've sold a ton of those, but again, we haven't we you know the marketing of that has has never been what probably what it should have been. We'll release it with the the new lemony smell and you know kind of give it another to go. Right. But that's a good device. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_03 54:30

Greg, you are such a music lover like all of us. Let's talk about some of your favorite moments, you know, defining moments for you like what what's your favorite album, who's your favorite guitar player, why? Um what's your favorite guitar tone? Do you have like a specific combination, you know, guitar into certain amps, that kind of stuff. You know, like is there what do you look for when you go to a club and you hear somebody with great tone, what are they usually playing?

SPEAKER_02 54:57

I want you to answer those in order. Okay. Um one at a time.

SPEAKER_01 55:01

Where's the script? Uh sorry. No, so the the first question was about records or about music. Yeah. Um unfortunately, in my music collection, I have way too too much guitar music. You know, uh that's that's a good and a bad because that's what I've always gravitated to. And I uh we were talking a little bit uh at lunch, and like from an early point, like the first few guitar players, I mean the the reason I really got into playing guitar, the thing that the impetus for me getting into it, and I didn't start playing until, again, I was late, it was like 19. And until I learned music theory, I couldn't really learn by ear. When I learned what the math was, then I could put together what 145 was, and once I found the center of the key, you know, I could figure out from that point. But again, my ear, for for whatever reason, my brain didn't comprehend learning by ear like most people do, like most uh guitar players do, at least the really great ones and so forth. I had friends turn me on to Hendrix and you know, and I kind of worked backwards, Hendrix, Beatles, you know, back from there. So some of those early rock records, I you know, I gravitated towards the blues guys for for whatever reason. It it you know, it was later that I that I really got into Muddy Waters and Freddie King and and Albert King and and I gravitated early on to Clapton was one of the first ones because he was, you know, he was the one that was out there putting out records like Slowhand was a big thing for me. Um Peter Green, you know, some of the stuff that he did. Um and in fact, um a little story that Kenny Quadray told me years ago, someone that we both knew from Texas guitar, is um he he he told a story about him and Billy Gibbons being friends and as Billy toured and and uh he's he he went to the UK at some point and spent uh a number of days with Peter Green, you know, getting uh from from the story that Kenny was telling me. So he spent a good amount of time with Peter Green while he was in the U.K. And he said, and he said, I came back and one weekend we were on a double bill, there our different bands were, and he goes, when I heard somebody playing from as I'm loading in my gear as I was hurt hearing somebody play from the stage, he goes, Well, I thought I thought Gibbons and those guys were opening for us tonight. He goes, they are. He goes, Well, who's that on stage? And he goes, It's Billy. And he went out in front and looked, and he says, it was a great guitar player that just had more in a short period of time morphed into this uh just amaz his He said the way that Kenny put it to me, he was Billy Gibbons. You know. You know, that was the first time he had really heard what he could do. What he could do and so forth. Aaron Ross Powell, Jr.

SPEAKER_03 58:13

I think I th to that point, I think uh there are some underrated guitar players. And two that always come to mind that I don't think get a lot of, especially blues artists like Billy Gibbons is is probably in the top three for me as most underrated. Trevor Burrus, Jr. We all love his playing, but like if you think about what he does, he's got this beautiful formula that he plays where he plays the same lick and he'll he'll s make a statement and he'll play it two to three times and then he moves on. And he's got this cool way of just guiding you through a thematically unified solo instead of something like uh not that I'm picking on this because I love his playing, and that's Guthrie Govern, where he can play you know 128th notes and it just like blah it all comes out at once, and it's like, okay, but he also he also has motivic development too. But Billy just keeps everything in the pocket, it grew so hard, and right out of the same ballpark is Jimmy Vaughn. The straight-ahead blues, those early those early Fabulous Thunderbirds records that you know he was playing at. And even to this day, I mean, even his latest album that he came out with you know is fantastic. He is such an amazing guitar player.

SPEAKER_00 59:29

Right.

SPEAKER_03 59:30

Who would you think we would add to that list, or is there anybody that you go, you know, he's always been one of my favorites and not at the top of any guitar pole necessarily of, you know, but just such a great player.

SPEAKER_01 59:43

Can I say you? Wow, man.

SPEAKER_02 59:49

That is an underrated guitar. I'm gonna have to leave.

SPEAKER_01 59:53

I think you know, I don't think he's underrated. I don't know that when I talk to people about like Jack Pearson, like everyone in this town absolutely knows who he is. And you know, as well as, you know, there there are a group of people that absolutely know. I don't know that I I saw him at the Station Inn one night and Steve uh Warner set in with him for a few songs, and he did an acoustic set first, and the thing that got me is like when he was doing the old blues stuff, even the clams that were off of those records, I mean, he got everything perfect. And the fact that, you know, that with very little, very little effect-wise or very little instrument-wise, it wasn't, you know, he he he did so much and and and said so much. And uh and it just for him, it's like drinking water, it looks like. It's just so effortless when you watch him do that. It's I've always every time I go and watch him play, I go home and go, I have a lot of very expensive firewood, you know. So uh he he's he's amazing.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:10

I agree with you 100%.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:11

And I've you know, I've got a couple of his records and I love those as well. So um being at XTS, you know, uh uh we are brick and mortar, the people that walk through the door. We're very fortunate to get a chance to to work with and and become friends. It's almost like everybody that that we do business with, it's part of a family. I I I I don't look at anybody as necessarily a customer or whatever. You're just becoming part of the family and so forth. And and um and I mean it really I don't I don't know whether you get that vibe or not, but it's it's like uh I've had people come in for the first time and walk out going, wow, I w I would have come in ten years ago had I known. And the fact that we work with some of the more higher higher profile people, it you know, some guys go, well, I don't know if I'm ready for that yet. Well we get to see so many great players. And every now and then I have to ask, am I going to have to pay a cover charge? Uh and I and a a guy that we've done a lot of work with over the last few years, especially the last three, four years, has been Andy Wood.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:24

Yeah, he's a great player.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:26

And uh as technical as he is, the one thing that always stands out to me is his musicality, you know, his attention to detail. But when he comes in and he's wanting to change his board, and I think I want to or I want to go to this, the the new fractal uh effects pedal, the one that just does reverbs, delays, and all of that, he brought that to us. But he already knows how to program it, he already knows what he wants out of it, he already knows. And some people want to come in and be completely hands-off here. You guys do it, program a few sounds or show me how to do that. But he comes in with a fully formulated idea of how this is going to be. And that again, all the spectrums of somebody coming in saying, okay, here's three songs, I want to get those sounds. Yeah. Um that's very liberating for us too. It lets us be creative. But a client that comes in knowing the gear, you know, like for me, I know gear, but I'm a I'm a god-awful player. Uh uh. I play what I play. I'll use the old Gibbs Gibbons line, I know about three chords. Uh but um for him to be as great a player he is and to be as so well-versed in all of the gear and and know where he wants to go. No knows which paint he needs for the canvas and and so forth, it it that's pretty impressive.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:55

You know, it's uh you know, talking about underrated guitarists that and I I really appreciate the sentiment of like just having this family network of musicians that come in, and a lot of them are underrated when you think about it. There's we live in such a very unique guitar town.

SPEAKER_05 1:04:10

Right.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:11

There is no place that I have ever been, and I've gone shopping for guitars in all corners of the world at this point, and here there's so many, there's so many stores, there's so many places to go and interact and have uh and be able to meet all these players, and then you you wind up hearing just some of the most unbelievable styles of playing and the diversity. So I'd say the most underrated guitar player is the Nashville community. Because that is like I feel like there are so many world-class musicians here that nobody knows their name. And they all converge in this one place, and it's it's kind of a beautiful thing. I mean, we go to go to Carter's, man, and you just listen, and you're like, like, wow, some of these players are just unbelievable. And then I'll be specific on one. Okay. Alex McMurray from the Tin Men in New Orleans. Okay. He is a phenomenal guitar player, and I don't think he gets his due. He does he plays a lot, he plays how he plays Jazz Fest every year, and and they do a bunch of gigs, but I think Alex he needs his flowers, man.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:13

Right on. Yeah, for sure. Okay. All right. Yeah, I'd I need to check him out. Yeah, he's cool.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:19

Uh I'll add one to my list that I got turned on to this player through Barry and Eric, because they were already familiar, and I mean it's not like he's an uh it's uh he he's well known, very well known in certain circles, but Ian Thornley with Big Wreck. Yeah. I mean, when when somebody asked me, you know, a an amazing vocal Totally. Amazing songwriting. The the lyrics to certain songs are the writing is is great. Uh that's a good one.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:53

That's a good one, Greg. He is.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:54

Playing slide guitar. He I mean, you know, the we thought I was think of Sonny Landrith and certain guys that are really great slide players. Ian Thornley's killer. It's a great concert, too. Yeah. And his regular soloing, you know, it takes me that takes me back to Austin, some of the players around Austin that just have complete command of the instrument.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:20

Trevor Burrus You know, two people just came across my radar too, just thinking about it, that I would definitely sort of fill out my top ten list with. One would be Dan Hoff. Because no one really gives Dan the credit that is due to such a complete musician. But even higher on my like would maybe number one would be Robert Cray. No one talks about Robert Cray anymore. Fantastic singer, great player, and just such a unique style when you think about how he attacks the instrument. Because it's percussive. It's that Albert Collins on a strat kind of a thing. But man, you listen to like I just was on YouTube maybe a w a week ago when I was watching him play from like 2024 and then going back to uh strong persuader days from the late 80s and just seeing the evolution. But like he comes up with some of the coolest blues licks. I would say on the on the same level of complexity, but he'll do it on a single string as like a Robin Ford might do like a diminished over-the-alter dominant kind of thing.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:31

Right.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:32

He kind of like just plays these killer Bendy, it's so Robert Cray. I just adore that guy. I think he's probably my number one most, you know, underrated guitar player these days, even though he's been a guitar hero forever. But but you don't hear him. He's never he's never like on the magazines, he's never really talked about that much. His singing is incredible.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:57

Eric Gales. That's another guy that I think is uh is super underrated that should be in those conversations.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:04

And especially his journey that he's been through. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:07

That's watching him play is so crazy. I've never seen somebody play like him. Maybe Vernon Reed. Vernon. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:15

Every time I I go down this rabbit trail, it's like I think back to a lot of the Texas guys that I used to see at like Rockefellers in Houston or the the satellite lounge that was right next to Rockefellers. But um you know, and guys like David Grism have have really you know gotten their dues and and and he's one of my favorite players. Uh but guys like you know David Holtz, another one that was in that same Storyville band, uh Dole Bramhall, uh DB2, uh amazing. And um great vocal, great guitar player, Charlie Sexton, yeah, amazing producer as well. For me, uh after g getting in, you you had asked me earlier after getting in, I I my taste really gravitated to to like studio guys, to like the Larry Carlton's, Lee Rittenhauer. And it was I'd there was a uh guitar instructor in Texas that I went in there in Houston, I went and did one lesson with the guy. And at the time I was extremely enamored, as I still am with Steve Lukathur and his uh his playing and his ability and his tones and so forth. And I walked away that day. He says, Okay, if you like that, you need to go Larry Carlton, Robin Ford, you know, which took me down all of the studio players. So being in this town and and being able to, we've done a board for Dan Huff and Tom Bukovac and and Guthrie Trapp and you know, they're you know, just going there's the whole list, Derek Wells and and all of the guys at Ilya that that are there. And I I know that I'm leaving out a ton, you know, 90% of them. Jerry McPherson. Oh, Jerry McPherson. Yeah, just incredible players. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:10

These are the A-list guys in Nashville folks that they get 90% of the work for the commercial country and Rock Americana stuff. The big artists come to town. These guys are on the you know, the Rolodex, the quick dial, speed dial.

unknown 1:10:25

Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:25

And and Mike Landau is one that that a lot of guys, you know, it's like he's always been one of my favorite players because uh and he doesn't stay his his playing continues to to progress and morph into uh different things. You know, when I first started seeing him, it was this uh it was the Burning Water Raging Hockeys era uh where it was uh you know, you could tell the guy got things from Cobain even, you know, as far as tonality and attitude and so forth. But he got a lot from Hendricks and Stevie Ray and the and stuff like that.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:04

You don't even have that record that they did and you know I don't know if you heard this Renegade Nation where Robin Robin and and Landau got together. Oh dude, there's a cool track on there for those who might be interested in it called What's Up? And and Landau's actually singing on it.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:18

Right.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:19

And he sounds like Mark Knoppler. He's got this like really cool, quick like a bullet, but all tone down. And it's just groovy as hell, and Robin's like skanking the rhythm part, and Landau's just doing all the crazy stuff. It's cool. I mean, as you would expect it to be, but it's pretty awesome.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:38

I tell you, seeing shows, seeing Mike play live at the potato, at the baked potato in in LA, um that's eye-opening, you know. But seeing David Grism at the Saxon Pub in Austin is also just devastatingly not only musical but entertaining. And and uh those guys are too hu I love their music quite a bit. You know, Mike has uh just his touch. It's like you know, again, it goes back to the hands. Um anyway.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:18

You know what's funny without all of these players, you can every single one that we've talked about, you can immediately associate a guitar with them that you know that they play. Isn't that a cool thing? It's like you think of any particular one of those guys, and you're like, that's what they play. Yeah. And that's what's that's a cool thing.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:35

Yeah. Oh, and on that point, I was about to ask, what's your favorite guitar? There you go. Desert Island guitar. Like you gotta pick one.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:43

And it doesn't have to be one that you own. Let's give let's give them that one. It could be any guitar.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:48

Okay. I mean picking one guitar, it would it would definitely be it would be a strat, you know. I mean, I I have a uh a James Tyler uh burning water strat that I got from Jim years ago that uh is a really a killer guitar. But a strat would probably be you know the one that I would gravitate to, like playing your your strat earlier. That the the neck, the feel, it's just where it's where I feel at home. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:23

Um what's yours? Mine? Yeah. Uh Telecaster. Yeah, I'm a Tele guy. Um I just love the utilitarian nature of it. I'm I'm still in awe of Leo Fender hitting batting a thousand on pretty much for the first decade that he was in business. Yeah. From the from the the lap steels to the to the tweed amps to the to the precision base to the telecaster and then the stratocaster. Like, who does this? It's a wonder. It's like, you know, your baseball guy. What's his name again? Sorry. Shoheo Tani. There you go. I know I'm s I I apologize, baseball fans, it's not my jam. But I mean, he's like that to me. Yeah. Like no one does that without failing.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:12

No. Yeah. And it's like and crazy. And to that, the the telecaster. Maybe if you can't do it on a telecaster, it doesn't need to be done. I've heard guys say that. Because there's so many tones. I I know I was even watching a video recently where Vince was talking about his 53 uh telecaster and just talking about how he uses the tone knob to shape. Yep. You know, you can knock the the the top end down a hair, and um and that's the one thing which we were talking at lunch. It's like two of probably one of the greatest effects that you can use is the volume knob on the guitar. Yes. And the tone, you know, dealing with that and and tone knobs, um, like Eric Johnson putting the the bridge pickup on one of the tone knobs. And a lot of guys do that. I I do that. I do too. Okay. Uh you can get so much out of that bridge pickup that you couldn't get without that being on there.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:19

Aaron Ross Powell, yeah. Guys, so for those we've got to explain it. Because we're going into nerdland. But for those of you who are along for the ride, uh if you have a if you have a traditionally wired Stratocaster, you can flip the wiring on it where you because the strat has one master volume and two tone knobs. And the way that uh the strat was originally designed, uh it just had it had three-way pickup selector switch. So you had a neck and a middle and uh and the bridge. The five-way didn't come out uh until almost 20 years later. Right. Um and but but what Eric Eric did is he took the the the lowest, uh the one that would that was the a tone knob, he took the one that was closest to the jack, the input jack, and made that a dedicated tone knob for the bridge pickup, which is great because the strats have a tendency to sound a little shrill based on the angle uh where they are in relationship to the bridge. Uh even though it's basically the same on a telecaster, but the telecaster had that bridge plate that everything got mounted on and it took some of that edge off. The strat didn't have that, it had a different bridge system. So uh so you could you could pull off some of the top end. Um there's another one that I want to tell you about too that I did on one of mine uh on one of my strats, and it is I can't remember it's called oh it's called the Fez Park model. Have you seen this? No. Okay, check this out. So five-way switch, if you want.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:43

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:44

What what you do is uh you can you you rewire it to where if it's in position one, meaning neck position selector switch, the the the last knob now, instead of the the EJ knob, right, the one that's closest to the input jack, that now becomes a blend switch rotary um for the neck and the bridge pickup with the emphasis slightly tilted towards the neck if it's in neck position. If you go to bridge position, it tilts it a little bit more. So basically what you can get is this beautiful strat scoop that is and then the other positions will still work. It's just blending in almost you could have all three pickups working together. So you could get position two, like a good m nopler out of phase kind of thing. You could get that, but then you can blend in a little bit more top by putting your bridge pickup in there and it scoops it out even more.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:42

I've seen that mod done with a uh push-pull pot.

SPEAKER_03 1:17:46

Yes, yes, yes. You can do you but this was cool because it was traditional. You didn't have to add a new, you know, anything. It was just like rewire. Yeah. Okay, let me uh your favorite guitar, Desert Island guitar? Desert Island guitar? Walnut.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:56

My first, yeah, you can guess. 335.

SPEAKER_03 1:18:00

Walnut.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:01

I do love that guitar. Well, my first my first question is a qualifiers like, so can I make my own strings on this island? Like, is there a certain, like am I going nylon? Am I going gut? You know, like Wow, okay.

SPEAKER_03 1:18:12

You guess.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:13

Well, I need to know if I'm gonna be able to change my strings because I don't consider the change what kind of guitar it's gonna be.

SPEAKER_03 1:18:17

Okay, well, we both picked electric.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:19

So let's I was gonna say it's probably like a D28 or a D35, something like that.

SPEAKER_03 1:18:23

For for an acoustic.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:24

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. But just a final guitar would be probably an acoustic guitar.

SPEAKER_03 1:18:27

It would be. Yeah. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:29

All right. Right on. I'm sure there's power everywhere. We can take a deluxe reverb and a strat of a telly.

SPEAKER_03 1:18:38

He's getting all the chicks on the aisle because they can hear what he's playing. We're like, did you hear that ultra domino like that?

SPEAKER_01 1:18:45

That's funny. One of the things I was gonna say, and you're talking about um and one of the things I admired about James Tyler and those that worked with him and so forth is is some of the switching things that he used. So like, you know, one of the options was to have all three pickups on at the same time. And uh that was used a lot on records that that we know, you know, pop records and stuff that we know.

SPEAKER_03 1:19:11

Yeah. And then you had the you had that boost you push push the boost in, and you can do the split. You know, if you if you had a humbucker, you'd add that in. He got so fancy with that.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:23

Aaron Powell Yeah, and it and it and it it it worked, you know. And some of the pickups that that he used like were the the the DiMarzio, um not the the uh Seymour Duncan's that had the like the red and the the the covers over them that were some of them are were fairly hot, but the way that things were being split, I know Rich Rankin is going to you know gonna go, no, you're completely wrong about that. But uh Rich, uh Jim passed not long ago, and Rich Rankin has kind of taken over the uh the you know, moving the company forward and so forth. And you know, I think they've done a new guitar for Dan recently, you know. Uh so I think they presented him with a guitar uh probably a year or so ago. Oh, that's great. Uh but uh you know being able to get different sounds out of out of like again, even going back to your telecaster, being able to just use a volume knob, your tone knobs, your switch, it it it can it can do a ton.

SPEAKER_03 1:20:26

It can. It's such a palette of tone, of tambral change.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:31

I remember seeing at a custom shop uh a Nash, I believe, when he was at the he used to work at the custom shop. Is that his name?

SPEAKER_03 1:20:38

Uh I don't know if Nash worked at the custom shop. I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:42

Anyway, uh there was a guitar that I saw.

SPEAKER_03 1:20:44

Bill Nash.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:45

Yeah, uh I th I thought so. Maybe not. Anyway, uh it was a telecaster, but it had a pickup under the pit guard and a five-way selector switch. It was a custom shop. So it was like a fan, it was under the pit guard, so you couldn't see it. And uh it was one of the coolest tells I've ever played in my life. Okay. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:21:03

Interesting. Yeah. Wow. That's I'm trying to think about it.

SPEAKER_02 1:21:07

We sold it at the guitar center in Nashville, and it was a it was uh butterscotch. It looked like an old like a black guard. Typical telecaster, yeah. Yeah. But it had been routed out and three pickups. It's kind of cool.

SPEAKER_03 1:21:18

Wow, that's crazy. Yeah. I wonder how he wired that. Anyway, that's amazing.

SPEAKER_02 1:21:22

I don't remember. There's always these cool It's pricey. It's a very expensive guitar.

SPEAKER_03 1:21:27

Was it?

SPEAKER_02 1:21:27

It was like 15 grand or something.

SPEAKER_03 1:21:29

Oh wow. Jeez. Okay. Man.

SPEAKER_01 1:21:31

The more you spend, the better your sound. That's right. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:21:34

And the better your guitar player you are, the more notes you play.

unknown 1:21:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:21:42

What else are we going to cover?

SPEAKER_03 1:21:44

Um, records.

SPEAKER_02 1:21:48

Oh God.

SPEAKER_03 1:21:48

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 1:21:50

We'll start on that end this time.

SPEAKER_02 1:21:52

Oh no. You can't do that to me. What favorite records? Favorite rock records or guitar performances?

SPEAKER_03 1:21:57

What would come in your uh underneath your arm if you were going to a desert island party?

SPEAKER_02 1:22:01

Aaron Powell You're really on this desert island today, huh? That's just a framework. So they have a batteries for the record players.

SPEAKER_01 1:22:07

Are we having rum later?

SPEAKER_03 1:22:09

Okay. You're just going to go to a party. You're going to go over to a buddy that you just met, you you vibe musically or whatever, and you want to go, hey, I'm going to bring over maybe five records that you'd be like, yes, yes, yes, real quick.

SPEAKER_02 1:22:24

What would it be? That's tough. It's like, well, have you heard Dark Side of the Moon before? You know? Like, Okay, let's assume you don't know.

SPEAKER_03 1:22:34

Let's assume you don't know.

SPEAKER_02 1:22:35

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 1:22:36

So like just to be on the safe side and just and it's not your final list. It's just like for that night, you're gonna bring those five records. What would it be?

SPEAKER_02 1:22:43

Okay. Uh I've been listening to this a lot lately. Arcade Fires uh Neon Bible.

SPEAKER_03 1:22:51

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:22:51

Amazing records. Almost like a Springsteen, darkest Springsteen record. Pretty cool.

SPEAKER_03 1:22:55

Nice.

SPEAKER_02 1:22:56

Um let's see. Probably want to bring something dancey. Okay. So like a Mike Snow record, Swedish synthpop kind of fun, bouncy stuff.

SPEAKER_03 1:23:06

Good.

SPEAKER_02 1:23:07

Let's see. Maybe if they're into art rock, maybe I can suppose they're into art rock. I could bring like a uh like a deer hunter record or something like that. Okay, yeah, he turned me on to those guys a couple weeks ago. That's a really cool band. Um Deer is in D E A R. D-A-R, like uh Deer Hunter.

SPEAKER_03 1:23:24

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:23:25

The uh let's see. That's tough. Uh two more. Two more. Um probably one of the ghost records. Okay. This is a lot of fun. It's like a Def Leopardy kind of jam. Okay. And maybe something classic like uh Zeppelin 2 or something like that.

SPEAKER_03 1:23:42

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:23:43

You know.

SPEAKER_03 1:23:43

I love that.

SPEAKER_02 1:23:44

Well, okay. I took too much time with those.

SPEAKER_03 1:23:46

No, dude, that's a good that's a good five. Okay, for me, uh Spirit of Eden Talk Talk.

SPEAKER_02 1:23:50

Oh God, I uh I'm gonna kill you for that one, man. I love that record now. I had never heard this record before. He turned me on, I just can't stop listening to it. Unbelievable. It's amazing.

SPEAKER_03 1:24:00

I think it's as important as Sgt. Pepper.

SPEAKER_02 1:24:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:24:03

So Spirit of Eden Talk Talk, uh, I'm gonna bring over uh Skylarking from XTC. I'll bring over uh Nevermind the Bullocks from the Sex Pistols. I will bring over, probably as a weird one, except Balls to the Wall, just just because I want to hear some big tone. And maybe if I'm just gonna follow it up with like kind of a funk kind of a thing or whatever, I would hit um Marvin Gaye, what's going on?

SPEAKER_02 1:24:29

The number one record of all time.

SPEAKER_03 1:24:30

Yeah, in our past list episode. No, but just because to bring it. Don't you think? Yeah. Right.

SPEAKER_01 1:24:37

You're just so predictable. Well, those aren't Brian's top four.

SPEAKER_03 1:24:41

They are they are but yeah. But that's what I was thinking. Like you know, boom, boom, boom. I don't know if you had these, but I I can't be that creative.

SPEAKER_01 1:24:48

Uh I'm gonna be a little more popular-oriented. Um Dogman from King's X is one of the great record. Um Asia from Steely Dan. Okay. That's kind of that man, that for whatever reason, like all of the writing, lyrics, music, whatever, that's always been good. Um there's a couple of Los Lobos records that are just I I forget the name, I forget the name of the record, but it was uh anything by Los Lobos, I would probably pick one of one of their records. Um that's um you know, I'd go in with probably Are You Experienced? That would that would be one. And um there's a there's a uh kind of as a as a as an off-beaten off the beaten path thing. Um well I I'll just say I was listening to Porcupine Tree this morning. Yes. So I think it's Deadwing. Deadwing's great.

SPEAKER_02 1:25:58

That's how I found the Deer Hunter, by the way. It was a Porcupine Tree show. They were the opening act.

SPEAKER_03 1:26:03

Oh, right on. That's a good pair. Yeah, okay. It's a really good pair.

SPEAKER_01 1:26:08

And uh what is the uh if I if I got a chance to bring a six, it would probably be Albatross by Big Rec. Yeah. That's that's a good record. But I love that.

SPEAKER_02 1:26:22

I'd go to both your parties.

SPEAKER_03 1:26:23

I would I would go to all these parties. I'd be like, yes. We're gonna have some good This is our our na our the Nashville Tone Club. This will be our We didn't have a tone party.

SPEAKER_02 1:26:33

I I like that idea.

SPEAKER_03 1:26:34

I do too. I think that's a really good idea. Let me ask this then. In the last couple of years, let's say, what's been an album that you've heard, it doesn't matter whether it's old or new, but something that was relatively new to you that you would go, that's amazing. And you can't say talk talk.

SPEAKER_02 1:26:52

I mean, I already answered the question.

SPEAKER_03 1:26:53

You did, damn it. All right, I would say. I withdraw the c I withdraw. Um For me, the one that stood out most recently, I I say most recently, in the last several years, but the one that was like, this is an amazing hour. Two, um Silksonic. Right, when that record came out, I was like, oh, this is so much fun. So much fun. So two, Dr. John Lockdown, which which uh Dan Arbach produced.

SPEAKER_02 1:27:23

Whoa.

SPEAKER_03 1:27:24

And so good.

SPEAKER_02 1:27:26

Can't wait to see the black keys. I'm going to see them in like a couple weeks at Jazz Fest.

SPEAKER_03 1:27:30

Right on. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:27:31

Michael Kiwanuka. It's got this very the way that it was recorded has this very smoky, it's almost like you can feel that you're in the room. It's almost like you can smell the smoke in the room. Almost like an old um sounds like an old Van Morrison song. And the other one is is actually a buddy of mine here locally. His name is John Radabaugh. Where we go from here is the name of that record. Okay. And it's like for me. At times I uh again, Asia is is an is a is a record that I listen to. John Harrington did a did a solo record that I really like a lot. And if I'm just chilling out, maybe having a scotch or something, uh I'll put that on some of the old Jeff Beck records, uh wired uh blow by blow. I love that. And I think John's record for me kind of fits in there with all of those records with equal weight to me. Now I know the guy, he's a f been a friend for a long time, but I I like not only his guitar playing, but the compositions and and so forth. So I think that record uh again a local guy. He's not 21. You know, he's he's he's he's taken this on and done several records and has, you know, really forwarded his I mean really started playing a lot. Um the last record he had a few people like Bukovac show up and play on the record and so forth. And had you know, so he got blessed. And it um and it it's a really good record too.

SPEAKER_03 1:29:18

I'll definitely check that out. Let me ask this just because that you saying that uh age made me think of it. On the people that are coming into XDS right now, how what's the are you seeing a young bumper crop of new guitar players or folks that are coming in with like a a need for new either buy new pedals or rigs needing to be built? Like are you seeing that happen or or does it feel like it's it's kind of a a certain demographic that's a little more easier to pin?

SPEAKER_01 1:29:48

We are we do have uh I think more young people coming in in the in the last couple of years than we've seen in the past. I I would think that like an an average age of the guys that are probably in or are, you know, mid-30s into the 50s and 60s and so forth, you know, there's there's uh there is a a lot of that as well. Like we're doing rigs for different instruments, like we did um Tim Weisberg, the flute player. Okay. Uh we did a f a flute rig, we've done saxophone rigs, we've done keyboard rigs, we do a lot of bass rigs. Uh we do uh guys that are utility guys that are doing mandolin, violin, uh acoustic guitar, steel guitar, you know, that that are covering the instruments that aren't being covered otherwise. Those always pose you have to approach a little bit differently the the utilities guys' rigs are probably some of the more complex at it at times. Yeah, I'd imagine.

SPEAKER_03 1:30:51

So DI this to, you know, whatever the routing is.

SPEAKER_01 1:30:54

Yeah, because they interface with so many sections of the stage and so many d departments.

SPEAKER_03 1:30:58

So the I.O. matrix has got to be pretty involved. Do you get a lot of um I mean, like I you guys built my uh my synth pedal board, which is a stereo pedal board that I run synths that don't have any effects through, I run it through those guys. But I also use that as outboard effects. As if it was just a processor. Like I had a 2290, you know, or a or a AMS RMX 16 or some classic piece of gear that I'm like, wow, I love that. I'm using it to process signal through too. Do you get a little bit of that too?

SPEAKER_01 1:31:33

I can't speak to that as well as Barry could speak to that. We d we do have people that put certain things on their board for either their home studio or uh they want to use for processing outside of the guitar world. If does that make sense? Yes. Um I don't think that that's that's I don't think that that's a common thing, but we do have certain people that that are need to use the rig for multi-purposes, and some of it's running vocals through it, some of it's running other instruments through it. I mean one of the rigs that we did kind of speaking, it's it's kind of kind of in the same ballpark, but um is uh we did a rig for Billy Strings that was right before they had to play Bonnaroo. I think it was the the week before, or a week and a half before, um we had to get a rig ready for him in like a couple of days. And he we they brought us a rig that was partially wired and everything was was good with the work that had already been done, and we had to figure out how to how to finish it up and make it all seamless with uh working with their stage setup and so forth. And uh it was an interesting some of the pieces that were there because of um the way his acoustics are set up with pickups and and doing other things with that. So it's uh I thought that that was a fairly interesting rig. And we've done larger rigs. I I think we talked about the the band Goose. We did um you know, a fairly involved setup for for for the guitar player for that band. Helping people s sound better, get the most out of their gear is really where we focus. So whether it's a a a weekend warrior, you know, wanting to just have something that's more bulletproof, that's the other thing we didn't talk about is you know the carry underwood rigs that we talked about. We did those seven, eight, nine, maybe ten years ago now. And they're still using those rigs today. I can remember years ago, like hanging out with Dave Friedman and being there while they were getting ready rigs ready for like Lincoln Park and things like that. It was like almost every year, you know, they were a lot of it I've learned later that they were changing stuff up and so forth. But it seemed like years past there was in in more rigs being done more frequently. You know, like we've had this rig for two years, we're gonna upgrade. Um but it's like some of the rigs that we have out there now, because we uh again, we have Eric that has done a million solder joints practically, it's like we have very little failures. Yeah. And uh we had a um we had one of our clients a while back that said that he was talking with other players on the road and said, Well, who did your pedal board? And he said, Well, XTS. And the guy goes, um he said, I wish I could afford that. And he goes, I couldn't afford not to. He said, because every every show I was spending 30 minutes getting everything to run correctly. And he we may have not the the last thing that we did for him may have been four or five years ago, and his rig continues to work. So other than you know, backing the truck over it. Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_03 1:35:01

They're pretty much bomb proof, right? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:35:03

I mean you've had what's the what's the longest that you've got.

SPEAKER_03 1:35:06

I think I think I've had the oldest one, is probably four years old, and I've played it on lots of sessions, lots of dates, right. You know, lots of gigs. And uh it all the solder joints are great. The attention to detail, the so I mean it's just you guys are worth every penny that someone's gonna spend on getting a proper pedal board put together.

SPEAKER_00 1:35:29

Right.

SPEAKER_03 1:35:30

And then what I'm excited about though is the pedals that you're coming out with. I'm excited about that. Like the new the new stuff, you know, and the stuff that you guys are gonna you know spend some more time on and just market it out more because I think the world needs to hear you know all the petals between Eric and Barry. The you know, they're they're probably having encyclopedic knowledge of every petal, every decade of every petal. And then them for them to be able to go, you know, maybe we want to like do our spin on it because we see where other petals have left off and you feel that.

SPEAKER_01 1:36:06

We have a few things that we're going to uh I the in fact we had a meeting on that probably a couple of weeks ago. We have so much work now get getting people ready for tour. I mean the reason Barry couldn't be here today is we have uh deadline commitments that we have to hit, uh you know, and uh and you know we're gonna hit those deadlines if it hair lips the governors, as they would say. Um but um but we do have a few things coming out. But we we definitely wanna in the past we've you know thrown it up on our Instagram and then we there was a new pedal out. You know, we're gonna take a little more time and and kind of release the the right way. So the one thing that I wanted to also can to not sound like the guy that's trying to sell you an extended warranty, but um uh one of the things, especially for local guys, is the support. Once we do a a board for you, uh we always understand the the financial commitment you've made to get that board done. And we tell everybody look, six months from now you're gonna have think you had a have a bad cable, and it's gonna be smutz in the pedal. We're gonna spray out the pedal and get get all the contacts clean and everything's gonna be right with the world. But the more we see it, you know, if you want to bring it in, you've got a big gig or you're fixing go on tour or whatever, that's the time to bring it in and let us take a look and just keep track of what's going on. And if we see issues, and we always clean up the board, we clean up the uh uh any contacts that we think need to be sprayed out and so forth. So there's a maintenance thing. And if we get everything done in under 30 minutes, which it uh most of the time we do, uh it doesn't cost them anything. You know, it's just something that we want to do to extend the life of of the board and so forth. I don't know. I think we've changed out some stuff for you in the past and so forth.

SPEAKER_03 1:38:00

Yeah, absolutely. Or I'll come in and like I can't hit that pedal. I'm having to toe, I'm having to heel punch it instead of toe punch it. Yeah. Just because it needs to have a little ramp underneath it to jack up the profile of the pedal.

SPEAKER_00 1:38:12

Right.

SPEAKER_03 1:38:12

And you guys cut a wedge and put it on, and it's like, wow, that's perfect.

SPEAKER_01 1:38:16

And and then in in-house there in Nashville, we're um, you know, we're building our own flat pedal boards. We we fabricate all of that. We're doing multi-tier boards, we're doing things on you know, multi-tier-tiered boards where the the top layer is hinged back. Uh on Rich Robinson for the Black Crows on his board, you hinge back and there's uh controllers underneath that are doing a lot of the pedal changes and so forth, because he uses a uh uh RGM mastermind to uh to do a lot of the changes. Uh so he hits one button and and changes everything at the same time. Uh so um uh you know, so if you needed a riser, you know, if we send guys out and they go, oh well, it's hard for me to get to this pedal, you know, we just go back there and cut a riser real quick. We always have stock that we had to cut off of another board. So we always have riser material so uh everybody can get to everything. And if they're gonna tap dance, they need to be comfortable in the in the in the dance.

SPEAKER_02 1:39:22

That's right. Where can we find you guys online?

SPEAKER_01 1:39:25

It's exactone x-a-c-t-t-o-n-e.com. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:39:30

Uh socials, et cetera.

SPEAKER_01 1:39:32

Yeah, we have Instagram. You know, we do we post uh Barry and Eric uh post a lot of like when we build a board, we may just show it and talk about it.

SPEAKER_02 1:39:43

Right on. Well, thank you so much for being here. It was a pleasure talking to you, really getting to know you. Uh looking forward to sticking in the shop on the swing by sometimes.

SPEAKER_01 1:39:51

Absolutely. You're welcome anytime.

SPEAKER_03 1:39:52

See you next week, everybody.