A Guitar Pedal Changed My Life

A Normal Saturday in Winfield, Alabama

1

Brick & Mortar

In 2002, years before I landed on this weird path as a professional pedal guy, I was an idiot in my early twenties, managing a small music store called Norris Music in the small rural Alabama town of Winfield. The job was mostly uneventful, but it was a wonderful place to work, and it’s where I learned my first lessons in the business of the musical instrument industry.

The store was your typical family-owned establishment. It survived on a consistent local customer base that was thankful to not have to drive an hour out of their way for music lessons, instruments, and accessories. It’s hard to imagine now, but the store never shipped a single package. In those days, the economy was fueled by getting people through the doors and getting things into their hands, not by paid ads seen while scrolling across a handheld screen that lived in your pocket. This was 2002, well before Amazon Prime or Sweetwater’s firm grasp on the industry and the now-understood practice of online sales.

This was the end of the small music store era, those places where everybody knew your name and where sometimes you stopped by just to hang out. It was a store, but it was also like an organism. It was a community where you could belong. I’m thankful for my time inside those four walls because, for a young guy like myself, it was priceless to have the opportunity to learn about the industry in such a forgiving and welcoming space. This environment gave me opportunities to explore products, meet interesting people, and learn many things I would have never had the opportunity to in any other way.

Let me tell you about one of those experiences—an undeniably formative moment in this pedal guy’s path forward.

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From Kalamazoo To Alabama

On Saturdays, I opened the store and got things ready for what was usually the biggest day of the week. I still vividly remember walking in, turning on the lights, opening the register, and flipping the open sign on the front door. It was a ritual that ingrained my life back then into my memories. Something happened one particular morning that I have looked back on many times since, wondering, “What if that never happened?”

It was a morning like any other. The silence that filled those early hours was broken by the small brass bell on the door chimed as a guy walked in with something in his hand. He came straight to the counter and asked if we wanted to buy his pedal. He sat it on the counter, and at that moment, I can’t say for certain, but I think a beam of light may have broken through the shadowed atmosphere, pointing itself directly at the pedal and at my destiny. I swear it happened, I think. There may have been a leprechaun involved.

In that eternal beam of light was a ProCo RAT Distortion pedal made in Kalamazoo, Michigan. It was one of the most important stompboxes of all time and was used by so many of my favorite artists, from Pink Floyd to R.E.M. to Foo Fighters to Coldplay. At the time, I knew none of this information, though I had heard the name or possibly saw it in the pages of a guitar magazine I had all but ignored. I was ignorant of what was right in front of me. All I knew was that it was a perfectly square black block of steel, and it said RAT.

I was captivated.

I was not the person consumed with the history and stories of guitar effects that I am now. I didn’t know I had a desire living deep inside of me to study and learn from the past. I was unaware of what now, in hindsight, seems so obvious about myself. It was a childlike era of my relationship with the guitar that hadn’t become so serious. Sometimes, I think we would all do well to remember that part of ourselves and try to revive it from time to time. That pedal stared back at me, and I think it saw my future more than I did. I know that is impossible, but that is how the memory feels.

Jeff, the store owner, had come in and happened to be at the counter beside me. Without hesitation he answered the customer with a firm and instant, “Sorry, we don’t need any pedals.”

Have more offensive words ever been spoken?

No, there have not.

Pure sacrilege.

In fairness, you have to know the area and understand that 50% of the guitar players in town were standing within three feet of each other at that moment. Jeff saw no use for an old guitar pedal that would have sat in the display case for months. Under those circumstances, he was right. Jeff wasn’t much of a pedal guy himself. He was one of those 70’s kids who plugged his stock Fender Stratocaster straight into his Fender Hot Rod DeVille, used its channel switch for overdrive, and remained perfectly content. He was the guitar-playing equivalent of Bear Grylls. All he needed was the basics, and somehow he would play circles around you and all your toys. It was humbling.

I remember being amazed at the speed and certainty of his reply. This wasn’t his first time turning away a customer who would have had better luck at the pawn shop down the road. The guy looked at Jeff and then at me with deep disappointment, and that awkward silence fell across the room. You know the one. It’s like oxygen and sound evaporate while no one is brave enough to breathe or say the next word. In that tension, I had a thought that changed my life. I know that is dramatic, but I stand by it. If any single moment started my pedal-collecting obsession, my career as a pedal designer, and any success I have had in this amazing community, it was this thought. I don’t know how the afterlife works but I’m banking on some sort of highlight reel so I can rewind and watch myself standing there, fully unaware of the life ahead of me.

Wanna know what that thought was?

Ready?

Here it is…

“Maybe I want it?”

Yea. It was that simple.

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I Took A Chance

Something about this pedal attracted me to its possibility. Maybe this old black pedal was going to propel me to fame, success, and notoriety. Maybe this would be THE thing that finally gave me “my sound.” Maybe a girl would see it and realize I was her awaited prince of grunge. That’s how love works, right?

That RAT was odd and exotic. The few pedals in our display case consisted of basic BOSS, Danelectro, and those plastic Ibanez units that looked like cock roaches—all of which were used and a little dusty. My pedal board at the time (a literal plank of wood with carpet on it) had a DOD Envelope Filter, Danelectro Daddy-O, Digitech Reverb, and a BOSS Giga Delay on it. In the hills of Alabama, new and interesting pedals were sparse, and this RAT was as out of place as a Cyber Truck in the Walmart parking lot. I couldn’t look away.

This poor guy, now desperate, threw out one last Hail Mary and asked us, “Would you give me $15 for it?” Fifteen dollars was cheap, even then. When adjusted for inflation, that comes to about $30. That’s three cups of coffee! This man was determined to rid himself of this pedal. Jeff was not moved, and he rejected his plea like Manute Bol rejecting a Spud Webb fast-break layup. If there had been a crowd of people in the stands that day, they would have gasped in awe. It was painful to watch, but I saw my opportunity.

I turned to Jeff and timidly asked, “Would you mind if I bought it? “ He said, “Go ahead.”

From that moment on, I have been chasing something I have yet to fully find. A sound? A feeling? An experience? I’m not sure. Whatever it is, back then, I think it was the unknown frontier of plugging into a pedal that might do something I had never considered. It was the unknown opportunity of discovering what someone else was so easily throwing away. That pedal had done things, and maybe those things were useful to me. That pedal’s history could be part of my present.

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Looking Back

That was the best $15 I have ever spent (other than my marriage license - wait… my wife paid for that). I had a new old pedal I knew nothing about, and it stayed in my guitar rig for well over a decade before I realized what I had. At the time, there was no way of knowing this RAT would be a highly collected and discussed pedal in the coming internet culture.

That pedal I bought that day with a few dollar bills would easily sell today for $500. It was what I have now defined as a 1986 Version 3-C “No Brackets” Black Box RAT, and it’s one of the rarest RAT variations ever made. It fell right into my hands in a moment that was wonderfully normal but unexplainably important.

What I love most about this memory is that I couldn’t see myself ten years later, learning how circuits work, ripping that pedal off my board, and hacking away at its insides. I never saw the original “Pack RAT” modifications I would devise from inside that steel enclosure and on that tan circuit board. I never dreamed of how I would design one of the first JHS Pedals ever, The All American, based on that RAT circuit. I didn’t see myself twenty years later, spending months on an exhaustive essay about this pedal, traveling to Kalamazoo, filming a documentary episode, and designing a product based around this pedal’s legacy. I never dreamed I would make a $99 budget line of pedals and fit yet another RAT variant into it. I couldn’t have fathomed the Zoom call I had this evening with a Japanese guitar publication who reached out to me for an article on the history of RATs. That kid from my memory went from knowing nothing to being considered the expert. That is hilarious to me. I had no idea where that moment in that small-town music store was leading me, and that fascinates me.

I’ve seen similar storylines throughout history in other makers and creators I love. It’s a moment in a chain of events that was never in the plan. It’s an audible that some cosmic coach calls from the sidelines. It spits in the face of five-year plans and Shark Tank projections of success. It’s the story of serendipity meeting curiosity and the outcome becoming an opportunity. If I am sure of anything now at the ripe old age of forty-three, I know it is my curiosity that brought me here. Not smarts, bloodline, money, or some other shortcut.

Only curiosity.

All of you are doing what we normally do. All of you are looking for what’s next. Some of you are reading this from a cubical in some office complex, some of you are on the train to do whatever it is you do on a day like today, and some of you are convinced you don’t have another play to play. I don’t believe that. The truth is we don’t know what’s next. We try to predict the outcome, tidy up the spreadsheet of our lives, and keep a tight hold on who we are and what we should do next, but life doesn’t work that way. Life is a living thing, and living things naturally reach for change.

A normal day at my normal job in 2002, doing normal things I mostly didn’t enjoy, turned into a moment that was not in the script. The key was that I said yes to the improvisation. I know this is a blog about pedals, but some of you need some encouragement to keep going, and my encouragement is simple. Be curious, try things, and take chances. If you keep doing what you’re doing, you will get what you getting. Just like me, there is something in you that you are probably unaware of. It’s in there wanting out, and the only way to find it is to explore what’s around you. For me, it was a pedal that led me here. For you, it will be something different. What is your “Maybe I want it?”

As I’ve said a million times. Just try stuff.

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In Memory of Jeff Norris

1956 – 2010

Thanks for letting me snag that deal and for always encouraging me to follow what felt right. You impacted my life in more ways than I could ever put into a blog post. You saw potential in a kid most people wrote off as “just a guitar player.” You loved me well, and I’m doing my best to pass that along as I go.

I miss you, Jeff.

Here is a fun one I found of Jeff and I in the Grand Canyon on a camping trip in 2003. I had just stumbled out of my tent.