ANOMALOUS

Profile:

We’re based in Calgary. I’m Michael, I design the circuits, build the pedals, and provide most of the artwork. My girlfriend, Julie, is a marketing guru and provides a lot of marketing insight, and she does some of the artwork too.

I am actually not much of a guitar player. My first instrument is the piano, and my second instrument is the violin. I suck at the guitar, and I don’t actually like playing it, but for some reason, I love building pedals.

Last year, I bought a second hand Lone Wolf Audio Plague Rat that one of the previous owners had sanded the finish off of. We refinished it with Julie’s artwork of a squid, and after that, we decided to build our own. The Bitten distortion was the first pedal we built, using the C65. All of our pedals have a cool story behind them, and I’m slowly collecting those stories in my blog over at https://anomalouseffects.ca/blog/

The main focus of our design is to meld metal/hardcore punk aesthetics with fine art horror styling. Since the Bitten, all of our pedals have been point-to-point “dead bug” style, which I’ve found ways to make my own.

The pedal I’m most proud of is probably the Renewal. My friend was using a 1970s Lidovox 1500X accordion amp head in his bass rig, and he was trying to sell it. But nobody would buy it, not even for $20, so he donated it to me. I made 2 fuzz-face style pedals from it, one PNP and one NPN. Almost all the components used to make them were repurposed from the amp, and I really took my time hand painting the portraits onto both. The sound ended up being far more abrasive, loud, and heavy than an actual fuzz face due to some changes I had to make. It feels good to know I made something awesome out of something nobody wanted. I gave one of the pedals to my friend who provided the amp, and still have the other one. If and when it sells, that’s going to be the one I miss the most.