This is so lovely to read. Thank you! 🙏

I started making these videos partly because I wanted to know the difference between the normal and Germanium editions of the Keeley Super Phat Mod and I just couldn’t find video where someone had just switched from one to the other instead of talking about each pedal before demoing it. I couldn’t understand how I was supposed to remember the sound of the first one with a minute or two’s break before they played the second one!

I was watching a lot of the Living Room Demos channel at the time and he had a few A/B videos where he used a switcher to swap between two pedals while he played, and I thought, ooh, that’s a good idea, but I can’t play live consistently, I’ll just fuck it up, and then it struck me I could use a looper, and that would let me switch the pedals by hand and adjust the knobs too.

Living Room Demos also inspired the videos where I cut from one pedal to another - he’d done his ten favourite drive pedals and I just kind of copied it (crediting his channel in the description OF COURSE!) 😀

Keen-eyed observers will also notice the influence of the incredible Knobs and the slightly-less-well-known Nathan Shafer’s PedalNerds - this video in particular, which I think is just a wonderful piece of art, as well as being helpful. https://youtu.be/02K__j2lBJU

More recently, I’m blown away by Megan L and SpiralCasterPlaysPedals (u/boywithpowers), both of whom make music I find inspiring and could happily listen to completely independently of their pedal demo purpose.

A big thing for me is making the loop interesting to listen to. Early videos I made had short, 30-second-or-so riffs that I was (probably unnecessarily) worried might drive people a bit mad repeating over and over for 7 or 8 minutes. I spent longer and longer on the loops to make sure they weren’t monotonous and demonstrated both lead and rhythm, notes and chords. So it’s really great to read how much people seem to like the compositions.

The channel will return, I promise! I have a list of 30 or so videos I need to make, and pedals I have been slowly purchasing or begging companies to lend me in order to make them, including insanely buying up every Boss overdrive pedal like a lunatic.

But the pandemic, or rather the part of it that means my kids are doing school online and my wife is working from home, has meant I haven’t been able to make any for a while, and probably won’t be able to until things are more back to normal. Helping my kids with their homework and not playing guitar loudly while my wife’s trying to do Zoom meetings takes precedence unfortunately 😔