"Boutique" pedals

pintspiller

To me it used to mean handmade or better quality components.

Not sure nowadays.

juansolo

lonestar said:

Small quantity, high quality, usually hand made/built

If only...

There's a LOT of shite that labels itself boutique, which does somewhat ruin things for people who do make what you suggest.

jellybelly

Anything made in-house, as suggested, would also be my definition. Thorpy or Paul Cochrane would be the archetypal boutique builders but bigger and more established names would also fall under the definition. 

Strymon, i’d argue, fall into the same category - they are as much the computer code their processesors use as they are the nuts and bolts, and that is certainly developed in house by a small number of people. 

I’d suggest there are 3 groupings - boutique builders (of various sizes); established industry mainstays like TC, EHX, Dunlop, Line 6 and Boss; and the Chinese knockoffs/highly derivative lines. There might be some hybrids between the three, but they stem from one camp or the other. 

deano

Perhaps it means buying a cheap pedal, ripping off the maker's label, sticking your own on, and then selling it for ten times the original price by using words like "transparent", "open gain structure", and "in the room".

Or maybe you can't describe yourself as boutique, but rather you qualify as being a boutique maker once Joyo has made a clone of your pedal.

TateFX

To me it means things being made in small numbers by only a few people. 

tekbow

On the topic of whether Strymon can be considered "boutique", mmm dunno, however they are something different.

It was put to me this way by a member of another forum a few years back.

"I definitely put Strymon in the boutique category - it's just harder to see in this instance because it's IMO fairly unique. The fact that PCB and DSP are used really just throws us off because of how we typically try to define this. The Strymon products put a LOT of design effort in the pre-production process, which is easily missed (going by visual inspection) at the actual production stage. The Strymon pcb's are quite clever - my understanding is that typically no less than 4 layers are needed, and they are packed with circuitry. So it's not like your typical "PT2399 delay on a double sided board with some analog'ish tweaks" like most other companies are doing. The chips/chipsets are either cleverly arranged or are proprietary. There is so much going on with the mult-layer pcb that it is impossible to trace it out.

And Strymon has succeeded in smashing the barrier between DSP and analog like no other. You have other "potentially boutique" companies who basically outright proclaim that analog is a necessity, and digital sucks, is lifeless, worthless, and should die. Some literally are that strong about it. And there's certainly nothing "romantic looking" about the interior of a Strymon pedal. From the eyes of a pedal designer, it is pure art to me, and it somewhat leaves me in awe. Why? Take any other builder offering some sort of "fake echo thing," and odds are it's based off the Rebote PT2399-based DIY delay projects. Something like the new Echorec by Catalinbread is not, but TTBOMK, Jack Deville was commissioned to come up with that proprietary chip - at least its foundations.

So Strymon simply approaches it from a rather different angle, and probably one that we wouldn't typically associate with "a product from a cottage industry," But if you look at everything that goes into the process, there's almost nothing to me that reflects a company in step with "Big DSP," like Line 6, T.C. Electronics, Eventide, or even a segment of Digitech or Boss/Roland (heck, or Vox, Fender, etc.). It typically takes a LOT of up-front capital to get a sizeable DSP production outfit running. And Strymon has done it on a very small scale, and I couldn't imagine a company like Line 6 replicating it with all the money and resources in the world (not meant as a put down to Line 6 - simply drawing a clear distinction)."

ThorpyFX

There are some depressing comments and general opinions in this thread but i can understand why entirely. I own, manage, and run what would classically be called a boutique pedal company. The company as it stands has 3 full time members (me, my wife and a new employee) and 3 part time members.

From the very outset I wanted to produce pedals that have not been released into the marketplace before, If i was going to do it I would do it properly...but this presents  problem in that guitarists are notoriously conservative on the whole and as such new circuits are often eyed with suspicion.

so to ensure we could sell product, the pedals have a sonic footprint, space, influence in mind that I can refer to... i.e. it sounds a bit like a big muff.... etc etc.

The reality is though, that description is just the beginning, with every one of my circuits they go further than stuff that's already out there, they do things that others don't and they are done to meet my needs.... i.e. I'm a really fussy bugger.

For example the Fallout Cloud was designed to meet a sonic goal... but its a new circuit. The peacekeeper was designed to cover 3-4 low gainers output from one pedal..... and as such its a new circuit... and i could go on.

the reason our modulation stuff is taking so long is because i wanted to start from the ground up...... R&D takes time... indeed I'm working on a NEW heavy metal pedal and I'm finally happy with it after 5 full design changes and 4 years of tweaking it.....

so not all companies are scammers, cloners or rip off artists... some companies are trying to innovate in a saturated market and competing against people with 20-30x the annual budget.

just bare that in mind when you place a derogatory label on all small companies....

Dopesick

@ThorpyFX ; anything to do with the HM-2?

ThorpyFX

Dopesick said:

@ThorpyFX ; anything to do with the HM-2?

Nope.... brand new circuit and does a HELL of a lot more

breakthemachinefx

Respect to ThorpyFX. We have a blog article which is basically our take on 'Boutique Pedals' I think, like other forum members have mentioned, it can be a vague moniker. We don't attempt a definitive answer here, but it might be an interesting read for some. https://www.breakthemachine.co.uk/boutique_guitar_effects_pedals_101/

earwighoney

ThorpyFX said:

Dopesick said:

@ThorpyFX ; anything to do with the HM-2?

Nope.... brand new circuit and does a HELL of a lot more

No HM2 for the Major. 

Metalzone all the way....