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“A guitar pedal that gives you the sound you have in your head but can't buy off the shelf”: Meet Emmergy FX, the British boutique pedal builder concocting effects for Slowdive and Radiohead’s Ed O’Brien
Boutique pedal builder Emmergy FX is a one-man band, run by Michael Gardner and operating from the UK. As Michael himself describes his fast-rising brand, he’s “the man behind the soldering iron” and “the man with the plan to give you a guitar pedal that gives you the sound you have in your head but can't buy off the shelf.
“The journey to becoming a pedal builder has been an enriching and enlightening one, with help and encouragement at every step,” says Michael when asked about the ethos that drives his craft. “I'd like to share the fruits of my labours with you and provide you with excellent-sounding, beautiful-looking, and uniquely designed pedals at a great price.”
The weird and wonderful tones Michael concocts have quickly gained the attention of left-field artists such as Slowdive.
Guitarists Christian Savill and Neil Halstead have embraced the shoegaze-inspired fuzz distortion that Michael aptly named the Slowdriver. Offering the “velvety swirls of classic shoegaze” paired with “added blissful layers of fuzz,” this pedal is designed for the delay- and reverb-drenched sounds that characterize the shoegaze genre.
More distortion is available in the form of the upcoming SlowKnife – a collaboration with the American small-batch vintage-style effects pedal outfit Electric Squid Industries.
This pedal is a dual distortion – with one half being a stock Slowdriver and the other half an Electric Squid Hot Knife Overdrive, with added modifications in the shape of a pregain control and a clipping options switch. In addition, there’s an order switch, enabling players to choose whether they want to make the Slowdriver or the Hot Knife first in the chain, giving greater tone-shaping flexibility.
Naturally, you cannot speak about shoegaze sounds without mentioning delay pedals. Emmergy FX’s Later & Later may initially seem like a clone of Mad Professor’s Deep Blue Delay. However, there’s much more going on under the hood, most notably, a gain pot that totally changes the game.
“If you want a clean delay, set it to zero,” explains Michael. “Want a dirty delay? Then turn it to full. It will start to create feedback even with the repeats [set] quite low. With the repeats up high, it goes nuts. Turn the repeats down to zero and the gain up, and it becomes an overdrive/fuzz.”
Recently, Emmergy FX teamed up with Bella Union-signed Deary on a limited run of this pedal, of which three were given to electronic music producer and DJ Daniel Avery, A Place To Bury Strangers’ Oliver Ackerman and Radiohead’s Ed O’Brien.
And for guitarists in the market for a delay pedal that’s a tad more complicated, the Mirror Mirror takes the simplicity of the Later & Later and duplicates it into two delay lines – each with independent time and feedback controls.
“Depending on the mix level, this pedal can go from beautiful clean bouncing delay through to extremely ambient almost reverb-like soundscapes,” Michael extrapolates.
“It offers beautiful unpredictability – but always in a way that’s playable, inspiring and totally usable… unless you don’t want it to be.”
- For more pedal wizardry and information, head to Emmergy FX.
