DISCLAIMER: No cats were harmed in the making of this episode. But one was seen in the background of our video chat.
Fuzz War. Cats. Absolute Destruction. Cats. Apocalypse. Cats. Interstellar Overdriver. Cats. Evil Filter. Cats. Robot. Cats. Supersonic Fuzz Gun. You get the picture (of cats in your head).
This conversation was anything but your standard run of the mill podcast discussion. Oh, and besides the overuse of the word “Cats”, all of those are the names of DBA’s guitar pedals. NOT methods of global domination (or are they?! *wink*)
FROM HUMBLE BEGINNINGS
Death By Audio was started in 2002 as a guitar effects pedal company after Oliver started tinkering with new sounds and ideas for his own bands. He started making pedals for other people, and over time the pedals got more and more crazy and more and more in demand. The rest, as they say, is history.
As for the name of the company, rest assured no one died or fell victim to any of the pedals DBA makes. Rather, as Oliver explains, it portrays the passion they have to build the best pedals they can. They live by the audio products and they’ll die by the audio products. You can’t get anymore passionate than that!
WHAT’S UP WITH THE NAMES?!
As Oliver explains, the names are derived from what the pedals actually sound like. Their team is driven to associate super awesome descriptive names to the pedals so players will know (almost) immediately what to expect when testing and buying new pedals.
While Fuzz War will obviously be a fuzz pedal, I personally am afraid to plug anything into an Apocalypse or Absolute Destruction.
The Evil Filter I am intrigued by. What magical sorcery will come of my quarter-inch plug when I engage this beast?!
MATT’S DRUM AH-HA MOMENT
Upon hearing about Matt’s drum background, Oliver immediately threw him a bone to explain how effect pedals can also be awesome as drum trigger effects too. What a surprise concept that now seems obvious in hindsight!
Must. Annihilate. Drums.
ABOUT OUR GUEST
Oliver Ackermann, founder of Death By Audio, joins us in this episode to talk about how he started DBA, his experience with teaching himself how to solder and work with electronic components, what it’s like to go from building pedals for himself (by himself) to working with a team and building pedals for some of the top bands and artists in the market today, and why you’ll see the occasional cat on their Instagram gallery.
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