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Keeley Electronics | Stompbox Makers

Back in the 2000s, word got out about an incredible electrical engineer who was modifying Ibanez TS9 Tube Screamers in a way that made them far more musical and tonally-rich, and that could make even brand new ones sing with the voicing of the highly sought-after originals. When both Peter Frampton and Steely Dan’s Jon Herrington began using them, the legend grew. Ever since then, the phrase “Keeley Mod” has become synonymous with top-shelf effect design, and Keeley has quietly become one of the world’s premier boutique stompbox builders. His own pedals—including the multi-effects powerhouse the Dark Side, the Katana Clean Boost favored by Billy Gibbons, and his industry standard Keeley Compressor, among others— are acknowledged as modern classics. We caught up with Robert Keeley to ask him about his approach to creating effects that stand out in a crowded market.

 

How do you decide what to work on next?

Sounds come from what you’re experimenting with or some audio processing technique you’re trying to learn. Sounds also come from inspirational recordings. Some sounds also come from daydreaming. So what I work on is constantly a mix of what what I’m learning to put together and what sounds and works well for musicians. Sometimes I’m building on older designs to offer some better tone or new combination of tones or sounds.

What makes your pedals different or better than the other pedal companies out there?

What makes Keeley pedals great is the engineering and sound quality that goes into every design. You also get our legendary service; ensuring that you’re always playing with an inspirational guitar effect. My early years working in repair shops let me see a wide range of build techniques and designs. Now with nearly 20 years of building amps and pedals, we give customers some machines that will last generations.

Bluetooth – Wifi pedals! Keeley Red Dirt Overdrive with digital control on Robert Keeley’s home workbench, complete with hand-written notes. Bluetooth controlled effect pedals. Save presets and signal routing on bluetooth enabled pedals!

When you start out on a new effect, how clear of an idea do you have for what you want, and how much does the end result resemble your original vision? How much research is involved?

Maybe it’s like painting with Bob Ross. I have a pretty good idea as to what I’m after; where the magic happens is along the journey in getting it built. That is where I start adding shapes, textures, additional sounds, combinations, and yes… Happy Accidents. I’m trying to make the final piece of art something that inspires a musician to react and create music.

I thought Oh Man, this will be the coolest stomp box everrr!!! You could create sooo many gorgeous tones and timbres!!!! And my guys were like, uh yeah Rob, think about it, what you’re describing is called a synthesizer. HA! But that’s what I do, synthesize sounds.

There are a lot of stompboxes on the market already. How hard is it to come up with something that hasn’t been done before?

It is very challenging to come up with a “new” effect. So what I find that I can do is to daydream about putting sounds together. Or how can I make a circuit dynamic, to play along with and react to a guitar player’s techniques. With the experience of putting together many of the classic designs as our own variations I have gotten pretty good at putting more designs together to offer new sounds. For example after we started doing digital reverbs in 2014, it became easy to imagine reverb spaces and go crazy creating a ton of fun effects. I started adding layers of sounds that we developed and it let me create a bunch of textures that hadn’t been done in stompboxes before. Keeley reverbs boxes became little studio spaces. We created our own line of reverbs that were like themed plug-in packages such as the Gold Star, Abbey Verb, 30ms ADT, Vibe-o-Verb, and Memphis Sun.

Can you talk a little about your creative process? How much trial-and-error is involved in the process of building your prototype? When do you know when to give up and try something else?

Recently I had the idea for Bluetooth or Wifi connected effects. The effects would be controlled in the regular way, just spinning knobs, or, you could control the settings with a phone app and even save settings and even complete pedalboard setups if you had a bunch of Bluetooth pedals. The creative process involved developing that digital pots to work in a typical overdrive or fuzz circuit. So I had to add the micro controller and digitpots and create programs to read and write values and then control all analog designs. Then I had to add the Bluetooth transceiver hardware and coding. Now I’m working on the phone app programming. This has taken place over years. From micro-controller designs and programming I learned in the 90s, to really new IoT technologies I’m still trying to get my head around, I’m trying to create a new platform. All the while, working with my engineers to finish other current designs. I plan on giving the entire IoT design away so that other builders and designers can critique it and help build something where many pedals could have internet connectivity. I don’t give up too often, I just keep the ideas flying in circles until we can put the pieces together.

 

Have you ever come up with a crazy effect that you doubted had much practical use, only to find someone who had the perfect use for it?

Oh I don’t know, one time I was dreaming of a new pedal design and was thinking like this…What if I had a harmonic generator?! Something where you had sliders that gave you control over each harmonic; so players could raise the 2nd and 3rd harmonic, and then boost the 5th harmonic, and cut the 4th, etc, etc… I thought Oh Man, this will be the coolest stomp box everrr!!! You could create sooo many gorgeous tones and timbres!!!! And my guys were like, uh yeah Rob, think about it, what you’re describing is called a synthesizer. HA! But that’s what I do, synthesize sounds.

How does the process of creating the name, the look and the graphics of the pedal work?

I have fun putting images and themes in the same way I get circuits designed. It’s an inspiration or idea that gets pushed around my team. I don’t mind putting crazy graphics on pedals, or sometimes putting out a very clinical and clean design. They are pieces of art. I hope over time they make a great collage.

Was there a particular song (or some other a-ha moment) that drew you to this line of work?

I was born in 1970 to music loving parents. We travelled all over the country listening to music. Music of the 60s, 70s, and 80’s had a dazzling array of about every effect you could imagine. There was no Ah Ha! Moment. There is an infinite well of inspiration.

Is there a song (or two or three) that you could point to as particularly fine example of what your effects can do?

Listen to any Keeley video on our YouTube channel.

Is there a guitarist whom you hope to one day use one of your effects?

It would be really cool if Trey Anastasio, Jeff Beck, and Julian Lage ran Keeley pedals one day.

Can you tell us anything about what to expect in the near future from your company?

We have continued to build our own infrastructure by bringing on more equipment and computer controlled machines. Our manufacturing capabilities are some of the finest in the industry. Our new stereo delay platform is going to be really exciting. We have been working on the ECCO, to be released Winter NAMM 2019, for about two years. It will be our flagship design and the basis for many designs in the coming five years.

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