When it comes to doing custom work for bands I find it much easier to do things for people I understand and appreciate. People who appreciate and understand what it is that I do.
Let's face it, no-ones getting rich out of this so some sort of .......... motivation is always good. This is one of those situations.
I've known Ian from No Anchor since the early days of his previous band. The highly underrated local band Iron On. They were surprisingly ignored by this scene and I could never really understand why.
Ian's always been a "musician" who does it for the right reasons and No Anchor are no exception. This band is never going to get played on mainstream radio, but then, lots of good bands can be included in that analogy.
Nevertheless, and probably to my detriment, these are the bands that I tend to gravitate to. Not because I believe all mainstream sucks or that bands are "sellouts" if they actually get recognized for their music, but probably because these bands usually "mean it" and that's why I listen to music.
It turned out that both bass players in No Anchor already used Tym effects to great effect (pun intended) so it was a bit of a no brainer when I realized we could probably do a signature pedal for them. No Anchor are one of those bands that get people coming up after the show and saying "how the f#*K do you make that noise" and it's a beautiful noise.
Despite what some hack "music critics" have said, Real Pain Supernova is a truly great album (I'm listening to it on vinyl as I type this) in the form of "rock/noise" genre that has been heavily influenced by bands I don't particularly like, but No Anchor have captured the essence of these bands and made it their own. Made it better.
So, the signature Real Gain Supernova came about when I was talking to Ian and Donnie one day and they were reveling in the "tone" of my Double Boost pedal which is Donnies main weapon of choice in the band. I went home and thought, "let's make it a No Anchor pedal" I contacted Donnnie and asked what he thought ? He was .......excited to say the least and said he'd contact the other guys.
They were all wrapped at the idea so I thought how I could make it more "special" for them. Since Ian has a more "clangy" bass sound and Donnie has the muddy, fat bottom end I ended up deciding on a high pass/low pass filter (tone control) between two stages of LOTS of gain so Ian could dial in a little more "clang". While it's primarily a bass pedal, it could be used for guitar as well.
The bands drummer, Alex Gillies is an amazing artist who does the bands albums and posters so it was up to him to do the artwork for the pedal. Apparently Ian was pretty picky here and rightly so. How many bands get to sell their own signature pedal on their merch stand ?