about jdm pedals

JDM Pedals is a small shop based in Alfred, Maine, USA and Berlin, Germany. Our goal is to provide handmade guitar pedals to working musicians. We offer a standard line that are built on printed circuit boards and use a combination of modern high-precision components and select vintage parts for authentic tone. Circuits are installed in cast aluminum enclosures with a powder coated finish and UV-printed graphics. We use the highest quality jacks and switches available. Our pedals can be powered by either a 9v block battery or the industry standard +9vDC, center negative (aka "Boss style" power supply) unless otherwise noted. 
Our JDM "Humdinger", "Vindicator", "Elektrika", "Blue Velvet", "Bliss Bomb" and our others  offer modern players access to the juiciest, most venerated, coveted and glorified fuzz sounds ever recorded. Beyond the simple classic "fuzz" and "volume" knobs, we have added additional  controls to let you fine-tune your sound to your rig. I don't do much promotion for JDM Pedals, but word is getting out on forums, at gigs, and as videos crop up on YouTube.
We also build custom pedals for players who are seeking  sounds they haven't been able to find elsewhere. If you are looking for a particular  circuit loaded with hard to find transistors, built in a custom labeled enclosure with the exact controls you want, drop us a line. We build fuzz, overdrive, boosts, tremolo, phasers, delays, anything as long as it is analog. We don't do digital effects, as much as I personally love some of them!  
We also add variations to our standard offerings based on popular demand. In the past few years, we opened the vaults and started offering pedals built with original OC75, OC44, and other "black glass" and "metal can" transistors. These 50+ year old components are valued for particular tone and response characteristics when built into the classic fuzz circuits of the 60's and 70's. Building these venerated circuits with all vintage components in a “point-to-point” wired style using turret/tag board construction makes for pedals of the highest caliber. This form of careful construction ensures not only top-notch tone, but an even more solid construction than on PCB - parts are mounted in the most non-destructive way possible, and the circuit can be altered or repaired easily.
These pedals are all a labor of love. Whether you order a standard model, custom unit, or point-to-point wired special edition pedal, you are getting a handmade guitar pedal tuned by ear and guaranteed to BRING THE TONE! Check our feedback on Reverb.com here, or look up JDM Pedals on The Gear Forum to hear what customers are saying. Rock on. j

who’s fault is all this?

Joe Dochtermann is the founder of JDM Pedals. He has been causing electrical mayhem for years now, from stage and theater to recording studios and dimly lit rehearsal rooms: 
"As a kid fascinated by sound, I scrounged a beat up "Lignatone" guitar from a neighbor and couldn't put it down. Using all the wrong tools, I managed to set that scrappy guitar the way I liked it, adding an extra fret for some rockstar antics. Plucking out riffs I heard drifting in on Hudson River Valley radio stations became an electric adolescent captivation. Electricity also fascinated me, and where I lived, I'm sure  quite a few electric sockets still have scorch marks. 
As a pre-teen, needing an amplifier for the electric guitar I had promised to "never play loud", I pried open a battery-powered Walkman extension speaker, hot-wired it to a borrowed Boss pedal, and could at last play with distortion! Eyes rolled back, the world reeled... I needed more... more fuzzy, swirling, echoing JUICE on the notes I was mangling! Effects were as fascinating as guitar itself - compact, powerful, transformative little beasts. By the 90's, companies churned out myriad flavors to target the burgeoning guitar crowd.
It wasn’t until I had bought and again sold off many, many stomp boxes that I returned to my inquisitive roots. Why didn't these pedals slake that thirst for new sound anymore? It seemed that all across popular rock music, a certain narrowly-defined guitar sound had become the  standard. After years of radio-rock assault, digging into The Stooges, Toe Fat, The Cramps, Hawkwind, and especially Muddy Waters' "Electric Mud" showed me that fuzz guitar waters run deep.
So I started building any circuit I could find online. Fuzzface, Fuzzrite, Foxx Tone Machine, Octavia, all the Tone Benders, Shin-ei, Maestro, Big Muff, and on and on. Posting YouTube videos led to requests to build and modify pedals for others. Now familiar with the classic circuits, I collected vintage parts often crucial to their tone. Now familiar with the guts of many classic circuits, hacking, tweaking and modding these often decades-old designs led to a collection of designs I started calling JDM Pedals. 
 I like the small shop feel, and very much enjoy working with inspired guitarists on custom pedal designs, so there are no plans to do anything more than work away on the pedals - and a bit on this site - as time allows. There are also plenty of projects that I am slowly picking away at... delay and reverb, amp-like overdrives, and oddball fuzz circuits. Stay tuned."