Q: What was your first encounter with guitar and/or pedals?
A: My dad played guitar and used to build and tinker with all kinds of electronics, but I was never interested in playing myself until my friends in high school started jamming and forming bands. He had a sears brand semi-hollow electric guitar and solid state amp, and for pedals he had a zoom 505 and a 1980's model Ibanez CS9 (that I still have and use all the time). Flipping through the presets on the zoom 505 was my first exposure to all the different kinds of guitar effects.
Q: When did you start getting into building?
A: Again from my dad the eternal tinkerer, I had just learned about the Klon and how it was selling for (at the time, 2012ish) hundreds of dollars and he suggested that we could try building one together. He bought me a klone PCB from Madbean, showed me how to source parts, solder, read a schematic, etc, and I've been hooked ever since.
Q: When did you design your first pedal?
A: I spent many years building one-offs for myself before incorporating screen printing into my building but even then it was just straight clones on stripboard or premade PCBs. In late 2020/early 2021 I was putting more and more time into building and printing, and then I started building things with the Canadian notebook design and found I was getting huge reactions everywhere I posted them. From there I decided that maybe I could start selling as a company based on that visual design, and then later realized that in order to be able to do this longer term, I'd need to do something a little bit more unique.
Q: Any long term goals?
A: Like many great Canadian music acts I'd really like to break more into the US and other international markets. I'm very happy with the success I've had selling largely in Canada and it's only recently that I've started to make headway in other parts of the world.
Q: Any other hobbies besides music?
A: I always have a hard time referring to myself as a visual artist but that is my biggest past time outside of music. These days it's making art via screen printing, and additionally I screen print a lot of things for WEC such as the enclosures, boxes, bags, and shirts. I can't draw very well so I mostly work from digital imagery created in photoshop and illustrator.
Q: Pets?
A: Scout (corgi) and Finn (terrier+basset hound)
Q: Shop website: www.WinnipegElectricalCo.CA
