The overheated fine-art world is supposedly cooling off, with prices coming down off the blistering highs of recent years.
But you’d never know that after walking the floor at the Summer NAMM Show in Nashville, if you kept one eye open for the visual arts. Clever industrial design has always been an integral part of product form factor in MI – even synthesizer keyboards have found ways to make their utilitarian parameter controls look as pleasing to the left side of the brain as their functionality has been to the right hemisphere. Guitars, of course, have always led the way visually; thanks to their innate curvilinearity they’ve made the leap (though some might say jumped the shark) into everyday artistic iconography – the velvet Elvises of the art-music world. Even hulking guitar amps have found ways to look like successful graphics-arts projects, from Orange’s evocations of Yellow Submarine-era fonts to the noir Art Deco of Trilliums.
But the product category that’s taken the lead as the artistic trendsetter in MI has been the lowly stomp box, effects pedals that may be running out of sonic singularities but seem to be blazing new paths when it comes to their visuals. From the silvery, sinuous scrimshaw of ScreaminFX’s Uverbia to Electro-Harmonix’ playfully named yet respectful Ravish Sitar to the abstract icon placement of the H.B.E. ComPressor Retro, there’s art lessons in there somewhere.
The importance of form hasn’t been lost on some. A U.K. brand consultancy, 625 South, posted an undated blog entry establishing a dichotomy between the corporately beautiful classic design of the Roland-made BOSS boxes from the 1990s, which they describe as “slick, professional… identically shaped and beautifully designed,” ascribing to them the kind of characteristics we’d pin on any muscular industrial form, whether it be an automobile or an airplane, with Mad-Ave-ready words like “innovative, strong and reliable” that might have fallen right out of Don Draper’s playbook. Oh the other hand, they posit the grittier designs of Electro-Harmonix, which they call “…absolutely everything that BOSS was not,” adding, “From the design to the parent company; you can almost tell everything you need to know just by comparing the two logos,” referencing BOSS’ stiff, regimented graphics versus E-H’s 1960s All-You-Need-Is-Love look.
Unfortunately, from there the blog post devolves into trite what-did-we-learn platitudes: Find your own path; be your own brand; love what you do. But it at least acknowledges the unexpected art that the stomp box has become the canvas for over the decades, like some graffiti-covered New York City subway car from the 1970s. In fact, there are those buyers who lavish time, energy and creativity esthetically contouring manufacturer’s pedals, adding their own touches to a box that, like the Lexington Ave. 6 local, does its best work down under foot.
In that way, the stomp box is becoming the gatefold LP cover that we’ve mourned he loss of since the arrival of the Compact Disc, a place to parse the visual elements even as we listen to the aural ones. Play the record, read the liner notes; shred through the stomp box even as you admire its looks.
“The pedal market is now like the craft beer market – thousands of options, many based on the same types of circuits,” Seth Wilk, owner of ScreaminFX told me. “Guitarists are sharing pictures of their pedal boards almost more often than their guitar,” on social media, he’s finding.
These artistic renderings also have a practical component. “For years, pedals have all looked the same but now visual impact is a game changer for sales,” Wilk adds. “From a dealer’s perspective, the pedals that look a little different are the ones that people want to take off the shelves to try out. You can’t hear all the pedals when they aren’t plugged in, so looks are critical. Visual impact is extremely important. This is what makes players want to hear how it actually sounds and drives the ultimate sale.”
The stomp box has become a kind of gallery, and they’ve become collectibles, too with minimalist designs like a 1966 Dallas Rangemaster Treble Booster that can command low four figures to the neo-primitive rendering that makes up the visage of the 1960s Dallas-Arbiter Fuzz Face, which can tally as much as $1,000 for an original. Dealers sometimes choose boutique products based on looks alone. You may not be able to judge what’s inside a book by its cover, but sometimes it’s just as rewarding to enjoy the cover for its own sake.
