I reached out to Moth Electric for an update on how they are doing~ their fledgling company has continued to develop over the past year and is, to no surprise, still creating amazing pedals. There is a magical combination of aesthetic and audio qualities to Moth Electric’s line that continues to enthrall and captivate me. Perhaps you’ll catch the same curious love that I have for their work, or maybe you’re already aware of them. Anyhow, I thought it good to touch base with them earlier this year, right around their first anniversary, and I’m sharing that conversation now.
CR: What have you learned over the past year or so? I imagine you've grown in all sorts of ways since your business got up and running.
ME: The past year has been a huge learning experience. I think I've come a long way in building my skill set as a circuit designer since designing the P. isabella. While I'm still extremely proud of that circuit, I'm able to design things of equal or greater complexity in half the time it took to make that pedal come together.
That really pales in comparison to the amount of new skills I've had to acquire on the business and marketing side of things, though. I've been making a living building pedals for about seven years now, but have never had to deal with all of the headaches of owning and promoting a business. It doesn't come all that naturally to me but I'm learning new things every day.
CR: I'm hoping you've found some things to enjoy regarding the business side of things. Sometimes the things that don't come naturally have a lot of interesting lessons embedded within them.
When we talked last, you had just released the P. isabella. Before inquiring about where you are going, would you mind reflecting on the A. incorrupta? Like with the P. isabella, I was struck by the tonal qualities I heard when I first listened to the demos, making me think about the areas in which my board is lacking, or rather where it needs to develop. What is it that you identify as giving the A. incorrupa its character? What do you love about it?
ME: The way I'm structuring my designs is to eventually have my ideal pedalboard and a Rat has been a mainstay on my board for 20 years now. A standard Rat 2 is an excellent sounding pedal out of the box, but the filter control on it severely limits the variety of sounds it can achieve. It's also always kind of bugged me that there are like 5 different versions of Rats at varying price points that are essentially just clipping diode swaps.
I experimented with a lot of tone stacks and found that a heavily modified Hiwatt 3-band stack brought out the most character in the circuit while still sounding like a Rat, which was important to me. Out of the clipping options I chose for the circuit, the asymmetrical is by far my favorite which ironically has never been used in an official Rat to my knowledge.
What really gives the A. incorrupta its character is the output section I designed for it, though. Modifying the tone section so heavily required quite a bit of makeup gain to compensate and I always felt that Rats could benefit from a little extra volume on tap. I implemented a boosted, high headroom amplifier to replace the standard output and it immediately opened the pedal up. It gave it more volume, more fidelity and a kind of 3-D quality. That output section is my favorite part of the pedal. It just brought everything together.
CR: The three dimensional quality you mention is what really captivates me in the sound demos. Can you tell me about what you have in development for release in the near future? What is next for your ideal pedal board and what motivated your choices?
ME: I'm currently in production for my third release, an overdrive that I'm extremely happy with. Without giving too much away, it's capable of amp-like dirty boost to pretty searing mid-gain distortion, has a very powerful EQ and is equally at home on a guitar or bass board. I'm very picky about my overdrives, as most people are, and thought it would be a huge challenge to get this one right but it seemed to just kind of design itself. I'll normally fuss around with circuits until I honestly can't tell if I'm making improvements or not, but this one clicked after just a couple weeks of breadboarding in between production.
Image by Moth Rust Media
After I release the overdrive I'll be focusing solely on modulation and time based effects for at least a year. My goal was to have a trio of dirt offerings that could provide a very solid foundation for a board and cover as many genres as possible and I feel like I've accomplished that. The first of my modulation pedals is 90% finished and will hopefully be released around November. Once I've released what I consider to be a "complete" board, probably in the next couple years, I'd like to get into some stranger and more experimental circuit design to compliment my more foundational stuff.
CR: I'm excited to see your take on both modulation and time based effects, as those have always been enthralling to me. What have you been finding inspiring lately?
ME: Musically I've been listening to a lot of ambient, particularly The Caretaker and William Basinski. I work with my ears for a good part of the day, so sonic fatigue can definitely set in. On the other end of the spectrum, I've rekindled my love for hardcore music. I've been listening to quite a bit of GEL from New Jersey and Primitive Blast from Sydney, Australia. I think I'm going to start a hardcore band just to play a few fun shows this summer.
Moth Electric Continues to evolve. It is thrilling to see them persevere and push forward and I’m sure I’ll reach out to them again sometime soon. In my mind they are up there with the best of the best. As such, it is great to celebrate their first year of independent creation and I am sure we’ll talk again in the future. It is a pleasure to take a moment to celebrate the good things in the world.
Here is how to find them:
Moth Electric
Moth Electric Instagram
Moth Electric Threads
More coming soon, thank you for reading.
Best,
Continuous Revelations
