An A-Z of less well known Japanese Boutique Pedal Brands
This article was originally suggested by my now good friend Henry Kaiser - leading guitar and guitar effects experimentalist and prolific producer and recording artist. He’s been a long-term friend of Toshihiko Tanabe - of Tanabe.TV fame and thought I should do one of my pedal roundups on Japanese Boutique Pedal Builders.
I had long intended to do a feature on Japanese Pedal Makers - but could not decide on the context or format - as there are so many notable brands. Upon Henry’s suggestion - it was decided that a good angle would be to focus on the less well known brands within that category. Japan is actually a very interesting market - closed off in many ways as most of the smaller brands don’t ship out of Japan, in fact a lot of them don’t have a proper or regular web presence - but just release batches fairly infrequently on a variety of different Japanese marketplaces.
As a sort of starter for 10 - Henry recommended an excellent resource - the ’effector-hakase.com’ retail website - which had a slew of just the kinds of brands we were looking for. It became 1 of 5 sites that I trawled through - with the aid of a lot of Google Translate it has to be said - these were the 5 sites I references in the main. I also referenced Effects Database occasionally to get web URLs for those brands that I had settled on.
- effector-hakase.com
- ikebe-gakki.com
- ishibashi.co.jp
- jp.mercari.com
- lep-international.jp
The first part of the exercise was compiling the long list and figuring out the exclusions - I decided that a number of Japanese boutique brands were too well known and / or in too wide a distribution to merit inclusion on this listing. Of course none of the big multinationals - Boss, Ibanez, Maxon et al, but I also determined that the following brands were in too wide a distribution already to merit being ’less well known’
So these brands were already ’too popular’ for this selection, including :
- Animals Pedal / NineVolt
- Aria
- Effects Bakery
- EWS
- Free The Tone
- Guyatone
- Last Gasp Art Laboratories
- OneControl
- Providence
- Shin’s Music
- Teisco
- Vemuram
We started with a longlist of more than 40 brands which we then distilled down to the final selection of 24. For a lot of brands there were insufficient references or details - and we could not establish if they were still active or alive even. While there are a couple of outliers in this selection - in particular Free Fall Diver and Weed - the latter of which used to feature on the Harry’s Engineering site (www.harrysjp.com) which has though been erroring out for a while.
There were a wide variety of criteria applied - and some fairly idiosyncratic - including cool and interesting names that sparked some immediate connection.
This was never supposed to be an exhaustive exercise - but rather just a list really of some of the more colourful and less prominent Japanese Boutique brands. If you have your own suggestions (with references!) then by all means add those to the comments below and we can look to do a second selection on the same subject. For a lot of the longlist entries we were unable to fully rationalise their inclusion. There certainly seems to be some slight opacity to the Japanese pedal market - where some brands seemingly don’t want to be found - at least not by those of us who reside outside of that cluster of islands!
I think we ended up with a pretty cool list in the end and in any case - as follows :
- Albit
- Bananana Effects
- Blackberry Jam
- Chocolate Electronics
- Ex-Pro
- Flying Teapot
- Free Fall Diver
- KarDian Sound Transplant
- Katanasound
- Leqtique / L’ / Shun Nokina
- Limetone Audio
- MASF Pedals
- Minimichine
- Organic Sounds
- Ovaltone
- Roshi Pedals
- Shigemori
- Shinos
- Sobbat
- Tanabe.TV
- TDC-You
- Umbrella Company
- Weed
- ZenZero Electronics
A proper A-Z by stroke of luck!
A handful of these pedals / brands have appeared on this site before - and a few that have been on the site missed out on this occasion - like Studio Daydream - we wanted to have things as fresh as possible and select some really interesting pedal variants- while inevitably there are quite a lot of gain and fuzz pedals here. Hopefully something for everyone.
The idea was to select the brand, and then choose one of their pedals to be an Ambassador / representative of that brand - which is how we ended up specifically with these 24! In any case a lot of work has gone into this exercise - and we hope you enjoy this - including some of the eccentricities inherent!
Here follow the individual details!
Albit - GWF-1 Germanium Diode Fuzz for Guitar - ¥21,800 / $155
Controls - Gain, Master, Tone, Fuzz.
A pretty comprehensive range split by Gain Pedals, Fuzzes, Compressors and Notch Filters - with a lot of Guitar and Bass versions of each pedal. Ambassador pedal here is the great classic sounding GWF-1 Germanium Diode Fuzz for Guitar .
Range Includes :
GW-1 / GW-1B Germa Wave Booster, GW-2 Germa Wave Low Mix, CB-1G / CB-1B Pure Clean Booster, TB-1/B TubeSound Booster, MP-1 Skull Pre-Amp Booster, GFD-1 Good Feeling Drive, SD-2 SuperDrive Distortion, MG-1 Skull Micro Germanium Distortion, MS-1 Skull Micro Silicon Distortion
GWF-1B Bass Fuzz, FZ-2B Bass Fuzz, MF-1 Skull Micro Fuzz
GC-1 Mark II Great Compressor, GC-3 Mark II Great Compressor, GC-3 Great Compressor, GC-1 Great Compressor, GC-2 Great CompLimiter
BN-1 Micro Notch Filter for Slap, MN-1 Micro Notch Filter
Bananana FX - Mandala Mini Glitch Pedal - $199
6 Controls - two toggle-switches : Unlatch | Kill Dry; 4 mini knobs - Function | Mode | Time | Volume
A cool small range of really innovative pedals - 4 Minis and a mid-size Pitch-shifter / Sequencer.
Ambassador pedal is the Mandala Mini Glitch - I aim to get most of these, in fact they've been on the wishlist for a while. Sometimes available on Amazon.com too - while supply seems to be somewhat patchy at times!
Range Includes :
Abracadabra 8-Mode Shimmer Reverb Mini, Aurora Pitch Shift Delay Mini, Matryoshka Bass Synth, Tararira Arpeggiator 8-Step Pitch Shifter Sequencer.
Blackberry Jam - Lemongrass Tube Screamer - ¥27,000 / $195
Controls - Treble, Bass, Volume, Gain, Boost Footswitch, Bypass Footswitch.
Cool range of 16 mostly compact pedals - where the ambassador pedal is the superb looking vibrant mint-green Lemongrass Modded Tube Screamer with Boost,
Range Includes :
Blackberry Natural Overdrive, Blackcurrant Modern Dense Overdrive, Blueberry Wide-Range Distortion, Cacao Plexi Dlx, Camomile SRV Texas Sound, Honeyberry Princeton, Lemonpie JTM45, Macaron Superbass, Mure Dumble Dlx, Raspberry Rat Distortion, Rosemary Plexi, Rosemary Rex High-end Plexi, Silverberry Dumble, Vanilla MESA MK I, Whiteberry Creamy Overdrive.
Chocolate Electronics - Iron Goddess Plexi Preamp - ¥35,000 / $250
Controls - Level, Gain, Presence, Treble, Middle, Bass.
Compact and bijoux range including the cool monikered Iron Goddess Plexi Preamp.
Range Includes :
Chocolate Booster, Chocolate Drive, Chocolate Wah, Fat Distortion, Heavy Bottom, MCB Mini Boost, Naked Crunch OD, Transistripper, Velvet Driver.
Ex-Pro - D&B MOSFET Distortion & Booster - ¥38,000 / $271
Controls - Treble, Mode : 1-3, Bass, Boost, Out Level, Gain, Booster Footswitch, Distortion Footswitch.
Another small but potent range - with the D&B MOSFET Distortion & Booster the ambassador pedal selected on this occasion.
Range Includes :
30Volt Limited Booster, 32Volt Clean Booster, D&S Distortion & Solo Preamp, PW-T / PW-R Wireless Transmitter / Receiver.
Flying Teapot - Fuzz - ¥32,400 / $231
Controls - Volume, Gate, Fuzz, +, HP.
Fantastic brand name - with a cool selection of Preamps and Distortions and a handful of fuzzes. Ambassador pedal is simply labelled 'Fuzz'.
Range Includes :
59 Preamp MK2, 200 PIGs Preamp Deluxe Preamp Black, Deluxe Preamp Tweed, Eureka Analog Delay, Monolith Fuzz, Reindeer RDD-2, Rum and Coke Fuzz, Shredinger Distortion, TubeFeeder Preamp.
Free Fall Diver - CSF Upper Octave Fuzz (Super Fuzz) - ¥23,426 / $170
Controls - Volume, Octave, Drive, Scoop, Tone.
Very elusive seemingly Big Muff specialist brand that strictly does not operate outside of Japan currently. It took me 3 years to track down a 'Huge Mini Fuzz' (second hand of course), and will likely take me a similar time to track down the CSF Upper Octave Fuzz - based on the Uni-Vox Super Fuzz with extra features! I pretty much want the whole range - and will do my utmost to persuade Mr Free Fall Diver to at least ship pedals to me! Only official reference that I can find is Free Fall Diver's Twitter Channel - as referenced.
Range Includes :
C2W Fuzz Distortion (Civil War Muff), Dead Head Muff Fuzz, Huge Muff Fuzz, MOFF Fuzz Distortion (Russian Muff), ReLK Sustainer Fuzz (Elk Muff), Super 4th Door 8bit Sub Octave Fuzz, Twelve Multi Distortion
KarDian Sound Transplant - C6H806 Vitamin C Add CBF (Clean Blend Filter) Fuzz Distortion - ¥49,500 / $353
Controls - Volume, Peak, Bass, Treble; Bottom Edge } Blend, C-LPF, C-Vol.
Feature-rich but pricey mostly cool compact pedals - where C6H806 designation Vitamin C Fuzz Distortion is the ambassador pedal choice here. Several pedals come in standard and CBF versions - where the latter pricier editions have an extra 3-mini-knob CBF Clean Blend Filter panel on the Bottom Edge. Standard versions are less dear at ¥38,500 / $275 - but still pricey.
Range Includes :
C10H12N20 Serotonin Add CBF Overdrive Distortion, C3H5N309 Nitroglycerin Add CBF Overdrive Distortion, C9H13NO3 Adrenaline Overdrive Distortion, CHC13 Chloroform Add CBF Ovedrive Distortion, CHC13 Chloroform Kyomurasaki Dark Version Overdrive Distortion
Katanasound - Furious Man Multifaceted Fuzz - ¥32,640 / $240
Controls - Bias, Volume, Fuzz, Duty, Buff / Kill Switch.
I have featured Katanasound on the site before - but not this killer (discontinued?) Furious Man Fuzz - which I selected as this brand's ambassador pedal. A mostly compact pedal range - with some really great sounding gain / fuzz pedals in particular.
Range Includes :
Blue Stripe Compressor / Limiter, Kamikaze Overdrive, Kamikaze Supreme Overdrive, Raging Wave Classic Fuzz, Shimmer Tremolo, Soul Baby Wah-Wah, Super Bass Octave Fuzz, Thundercloud Overdrive Fuzz, Venomous Snake Octave Fuzz, Volcanic Eruption Octave Fuzz.
Leqtique / L' / Shun Nokina - l' 10/10 Distortion - ¥12,300 / $90
Controls - Volume, Gain, Bottom, Treble.
Now mostly consists of one-off swirly paint effect compact pedals with no labels. While I have an even softer spot for the seemingly discontinued L' Mini Series - where my favourite 10/10 Distortion originates from - a really potent firecracker of a Marshally-sounding Distortion. I will probably look to grab a few more of the L' Minis!
Range Includes :
L' Minis : 9/9 Distortion, CLHD Caeruleum Lightdrive High Definition, Kigen Tosin Abasi Signature Distortion (based on Redemptionist), MAT / Maestoso Overdrive, PV / ProVoost Clean Booster, Red / Redemptionist Distortion, Roch / Rochechouart Overdrive, Roger Overdrive.
Main Series : 10Band EQ, 9/9 Distortion, 10/10 Distortion, 11/11 Distortion, Beryl / Beryllium Dual OpAmp Distortion, Caeruleum Lightdrive High Definition, EDM PT2399 Digital Delay, Maestoso Overdrive, Maestro Anqtique TS10 style Overdrive, Roger Overdrive, ProVoost Clean Booster, Redemptionist Distortion, Rochechouart Overdrive, Stellaclasm Belton Brick Reverb
Limetone Audio - Funther Transparent Overdrive - ¥30,250 / $216
Controls - Volume, Gain, Tone.
Once more I feature a discontinued pedal - a really cool sounding Klone adjacent overdrive with an excellent 'Funther' moniker (Fun Panther!). The range is mostly larger size pedals now - Volume and Expression pedals, and some mid-size Preamps and Compressors.
Focus Compressor, Focus Black Compressor, Focus NX Compressor, Irodori Booster / Buffer, Jackal Overdrive / Distortion, Jackal Midnight Overdrive Distortion, various LTV designation Volume & Expression Pedals.
MASF Pedals - Possessed Fluttery Delay / Tremolo / Glitch - ¥25,200 / $180
Controls - Taste, Touch, Smell, Hearing, Sight.
Fairly monochrome looking range nowadays with a more colourful past - and some very distinctive and unique effects on its roster. The Brand Ambassador is the amazing Possessed Glitchy Fluttery Delay Pedal - sounds superb!
Range Includes :
13u22130x Distortion / Octavizer, Kidnapper DOD FX33 style Fuzz, Lavender Head High Gain Fuzz, Paranoid Black Sabbath style Distortion, Raptio Glitch / Hold Effect
Minimichine - Tamayura Bass Overdrive - ¥19,800 / $141
Controls - Volume, Gain, Mix, Tone.
A tiny range of Compact and Mini pedals - mostly with cute cat and cityscape graphics - very Japanese and a fantastic brandname for a pedal company! The Ambassador pedal on this occasion is the cutesy Tamayura Bass Overdrive.
Range Includes :
Aoniyoshi Booster Mini, Mahoroba Crunchy Fuzzy Distortion Mini, Tayutahi Tremolo, Urara Overdrive.
Organic Sounds - The Tower Ram's Head style Muff - ¥42,000 / $299
Controls - Volume, Tone, Gain.
Celebrated Classic Fuzz specialist using the highest quality of NOS components. The Ambassador pedal here is the stunning looking and shiny The Tower Rams Head style Muff.
Range Includes :
Ares Drive, Hydra Drive, Kerberos Booster, OGN MKII+, Organic Bender MKI, Orga Face Fuzz Faces with unique NOS Transistors, Orga Tone Buzzaround, Orgamaster RangeMaster, Orgaround Aged Buzzaround, Poseidon Booster, Rain Storm Hybrid Buzzaround, The Big Tower Ram's Head style Muff, Zeus Drive, Zorga Machine Zorg.
Ovaltone - 34Xtreme MIAB / Plexi / Bogner Ecstasy Distortion - ¥32,400 / $231
Controls - Voice : Mids Focus, Flat, Highs Focus, Tone, Channel : Bogner / Mids / Friedman High Gain / Plexi, Master, Gain.
Small but broad range of variously sized devices - some MIAB types, some Mods and some original products. The Ambassador pedal is a great sounding compact MIAB type - the 34Xtreme named after the tubes used in those amps - EL34s!
Range Includes :
Forty 5 Drive Gear JTM45 Overdrive, Fountain Overdrive, GD-013 Overdrive Distortion, Merkava Overdrive, OD-Five 2 eXplosion Overdrive Distortion, Ovalized Screamer-9, Ovalized Screamer-10, Ovaltone Preamp, UB-C3 Booster, UB-G4 Booster, UB-S5 Booster, Warm Gear Booster
Roshi Pedals - Elf Fuzz Sustainer Fuzz Elk style Muff - ¥35,200 / $251 / £269
Controls - Volume, Sustain, Tone.
Mines similar ground to Organic Sound - mostly classic pedal takes, and chiefly Fuzz - again with highest quality of construction. My good friend Joe Light stocks these too in the UK at his Joe's Pedal Boutique. Ambassador pedal is the suitably authentic Elf - Elk Sustainar Muff style fuzz.
Range Includes :
Plexition MIAB Overdrive / Distortion, Smug Face Ge FF, Smug Face Si FF.
Shigemori - Ruby Stone Premium Overdrive - ¥43,500 / $310
Controls - Volume, Tone, Gain.
Small range of mostly Compact Overdrives and Distortions. Ambassador pedal of choice is the really articulate and attractive metallic bronze enclosure Ruby Stone Premium Overdrive.
Range Includes :
G.O.T Bass Drive, Muse Smooth Overdrive, Peach Puff Clean Crunch Fuzz, Pretone Tone Processor, RaD Distortion, Ruby Stone Overdrive, Stone Drive Custom V3 & V3P Overdrive, Tracks Bass Preamp.
Shinos - Alice The Goon British Medium to High Gain Drive - ¥24,500 / $175
shinosamp.com/products/bluetongue
Controls - Level, Drive, Presence.
Tiny 3 x Compact Pedal Range with the ingeniously named 'Alice The Goon' pedal which just had to feature - and of course as the Ambassador pedal here! These pedals are specifically known as the Blue Tongue Series and feature a lizard on the artwork (presumably a blue-tongued lizard!).
Range Includes :
The Blast Transparent Natural Overdrive, Naughty Brain MIAB style Distortion
Sobbat - ODB-1S Compact Over Drive Breaker - ¥28,000 / $200
Controls - Level, Treble, Bass, Drive.
Decent range of Compact, Mid-Size and Large Gain / Fuzz pedals - often Extended / Streamlined (Compact) versions of the same pedal. We select the OBD-1S Compact Over Drive Breaker as the Ambassador pedal for this brand.
Range Includes :
BS-1S Compact Boost Drive Breaker, DB-1 Drive Breaker, DB-1S Compact Drive Breaker, DB-2 Drive Breaker Distortion, DB-2S Cmopact Drive Breaker Distortion DB-3 Drive Breaker with Boost, DB-4R Drive Breaker with Boost, DB-Bass Drive Breaker with Boost, FB-1R Fuzz Breaker, FB-2R Fuzz Breaker Si FF, FB-3 Octave Fuzz Breaker, FB-4 Octave Fuzz Breaker, GV-1 Glow Vibe Uni-Vibe, PB-1 Phase Breaker, PB-2 Phase Breaker, SW-1 A/B Switcher.
Tanabe.TV - Sunkudo Germanium Buzzaround style Fuzz - $300
Controls - Sustain, Volume, Tone, LED.
Toshihiko Tanabe is kind of the catalyst to this selection as his long-time friend Henry Kaiser was the one who suggested I do a feature on Japanese Boutique Builders. I've been meaning to get one of these in for a while - in fact I will probably want one each of the May Queen, Santanabe, Sunkudo, and Zenkudo, and I will wait until there is a Micro Zenkudo too! Generally all you need to know is that Dumkudo's are optimised for Single Coil pickups [SC], and Zenkudo's are optimised for Humbunckers [HB]! Now that I have a contact - I can hopefully start down this road - where the starting point has to be the selected Ambassador pedal - the Sunkudo 3-Germanium Transistor Burns Buzzaround style circuit - it really sounds superb!
Range Includes :
Dum + Zen Twin Custom [SC+HB], Dumkudo OverDrive [SC], Dumkudo Twin Custom [SC], May Queen OverDrive Micro Dumkudo OverDrive [SC], Santanabe OverDrive, Zenkudo OverDrive [HB], Zenkudo Twin Custom [HB]
TDC-You - 007 Creamy Drive - ¥33,440 / $240
Controls - LF±, M-Freq, MF±, HF±, Level, Gain.
Decent selection of extended-range Mid and Large size boxes. The 007 Creamy Drive is the choice for Ambassador pedal.
Range Includes :
001 Crunch Booster, 005 Classic Lead Distortion, 006 Bass Driver, 008 Mild Blues Overdrive, Barry Sparks Chaotica Bass Driver, Bass DI.
Umbrella Company - Hitchhike Drive Tweed style Overdrive / Preamp - ¥23,000 / $165
Controls - Volume, Gain, Bass, Treble, Saturate : Off/On, Amp Type : B (Bassman) / D (Deluxe) / T (Fender Twin).
Only 2 pedals of note here really - and I have featured the Hitchhike Drive on this site before in the Tweed style pedals rundown - actually a really decent candidate of the type - and has been on the wishlist for a while - has taken bit of a backseat since I got the Tubesteader EggNog - still would be nice to have - and the #24 Hard Overdrive looks pretty cool too.
Range Includes :
#24 Hard Overdrive / Distortion, The Fade Control Input / Output Fader, Fusion Blender.
Weed - UGEEE High Gain Distortion - last sold on Mercari for ¥16,000-¥30,000 / $115-$214
Used to be hosted on www.harrysjp.com - currently reading as 403 Error - defunct?
Controls - Level, Mid Boost : On/Off, Gain, Treble, Middle, Bass.
UGEEE was a Weed collaboration with Kaoru - lead guitarist for Japanese Metal band Dir En Grey - a quite superb High Gain Distortion pedal which is still in demand and people are paying over $300 for - long since discontinued - as seems to be the case for both the various Weed Mods, and own creations. I'm still very much on the hunt for a Weed Ugeee - but certainly not at any cost! Patience will persevere!
Range Includes :
Freezer Chorus, BD-2 Mod, DD-6 Mod, Distortion+ Mod, DS-1 Mod, Phase 90 Mod, SD-1 Mod, Sweet Bass Overdrive, Sweet Drive, BePee Dragonfly Bass Preamp
ZenZero Electronics - FuzU Muff Inspired High Gain Distortion ¥24,600 / $175
Controls - Gain, Volume, Mids, Tone.
Tiny range of 3 Compacts and 2 mid-size boxes - typical boost, overdrive, fuzz stuff. The 4-knob FuzU Fuzz is interesting though as an extended-range Compact Muff - as there are so many Japanese big box versions of those - I say get a compact FuzU instead - it sounds immense!
Range Includes :
2KP 2-Knob Pony Preamp / Booster, Habu Heavy Metal Distortion, One Knob Pony MOSFET Preamp Booster, Red Crown Vintage Overdrive & High Energy Distortion.
Final Thoughts
There are several pedals and groups of pedals here that I have on my wishlist. I will start by mentioning whole ranges that I'm keen on, and then more individual pedals.
I an pretty much interested in the full ranges or majority of pedals from :
- Bananana Effects
- Free Fall Diver
- Leqtique L'
- Tanabe.TV
And will look to acquire as many of those as I can over the next months and years.
I also really want to get my hands on the Katanasound Furious Man Multifaceted Fuzz, MASF Pedals Possessed, Weed UGEEE, and ZenZero FuzU!
Some of those are fairly easy to come by and plentiful - while others are going to be nigh impossible to find.
Also - prices can fluctuate enormously, and it's often a waiting game - where if you're patient enough - you will eventually get the pedal you want at a price that is kind of within your ballpark. That certainly happened for me for the Free Fall Diver Huge - which I was chasing down for several years.
Often with these pedal acquisitions you need to pass on an opportunity as you're already committed elsewhere - but then when the opportunity arises again - the price has somehow shot up in the interim. So early on with the Free Fall Diver Huge I had a couple of chances to snap up that pedal for very reasonable monies. Then for the next few opportunities the price was somehow stratospheric - before it then settled down again many months later.
I had a couple of chances to get the CSF too - but I was laser-focused on the pursuit of the smaller Huge - and so missed out on both of those opportunities that crossed my path - and right now there are none to be found! But patience will surely win out again.
Note also that price is rarely an indicator of quality or condition of a pedal - as that can fluctuate enormously too. While the Japanese vendors tend to be fairer with their appraisal of pedal conditions - and err on the side of caution - meaning that you typically get a more accurate and honest description and validation for those pedals - versus listings from certain other countries.
In any case - all this is just scratching the surface really - there are dozens more tiny but interesting boutique brands to be found in Japan - one of these years I will make the journey / pilgrimage out there and track some of those down in person.
Thank goodness for the internet and Google Translate - otherwise so much of this would remain hidden from us too.
I do hope you enjoyed this episode - and it would be cool to hear which your own favourite Japanese boutique pedal builders are - and which favourite pedals of yours you think I should track down!
And thank you once more to Henry Kaiser for the inspiration and the assist!
