Today we're grilling the one & only Steve from Demedash Effects!
Q: What was your first encounter with guitar and/or pedals?
A: I got the Offspring's Americana album on cassette when I was in 5th grade and just really wanted to know how to play the start of The Kids Aren't Alright, so I bugged my parents until they bought me a guitar and amp. I mainly played punk and old school metal so I never really got into effects until I was in university and recording a bunch of music I'd written, and wanted an easy way to get some different sounds without buying a bunch of different amps. So I started buying used pedals on Kijiji (kind of like a Canadian version of Craigslist).
Q: When did you start getting into building?
A: I was in school studying electrical engineering, so I figured it'd be cool and ultimately cheaper to try to build a few pedals on stripboard (this was 2012, and DIY building wasn't nearly as monetized as it is now. Tayda might have been around, but DIY PCBs and whatnot were much less common). I sucked at it for a really long time. Then I sucked a little less. Then I learned about modding and modded everything I owned. I modded a looooot of stuff out of operation. Then school got really hard and I stopped.
Q: When did you design your first pedal?
A: Probably 2017 or 2018. Got back into building once I was out of school and had time again. I found out about DIY PCBs and was like, oh shit those are probably a lot more reliable, I could probably mod them and do some cool shit. Eventually I had some stuff that was changed to the point it was unrecognizable and was like, well this is kinda dope, let's throw one of these on Kijiji and see what happens.
Q: What do you do for a living?
A: I do product/circuit design for other companies and design my own pedals as well. Been a while since I released anything but I've got like 5 pedals pretty much ready to go when I can find the time to get everything together and release them. Marketing isn't my favorite thing though, and the idea of making money isn't enough to overcome that. These days I mainly just sell pedals to people who email or message me because I don't have the time or energy to stock built units or act extroverted on social media.
Q: Any long term goals?
A: Achieve a bit more of a stable revenue stream outside of my own company and then spend years over-engineering the coolest shit anyone has ever seen or heard so that I can pop up out of nowhere and release like 50 units and then go dark again. I just think that would be really funny.
Q: Any other hobbies besides music?
A: I love doing graphic design shit, though I'm no pro at it. I do all my own for my company, and like doing practice in Adobe illustrator just making cool portraits.
Q: Pets?
