Thank You, pt 2
something old, something new. something borrowed, something blue.
Let’s talk about Thank You (the pedal this time). Long form, of course.
First off, yes. Thank You is inspired by a certain famous distortion unit of 80s lore that, in the words of a wise man wishing to avoid a trademark dispute, “loves cheese, hates cats.”
It’s pretty different though!
The original mean mouse pedal is known for its aggressive brand of high gain shreddage. Tight lows, chainsaw mids, and abrasive treble make it right at home for everything from hair metal to asking my guy Kenneth about frequencies. Many notable mousekateers love this pedal for its low gain “sweet spot” where the gain knob is just barely cracked open, allowing for a nice high pass boost. This use case is somewhat-ironically loved by death metal guitarists who want one more bass-tightening push into their already cranked amps. All-in-all, it kind of does one thing, and maybe two if you squint. But boy does it do those things!
I have a personal attachment to The Black Box. If I remember correctly, it was my first “nice” pedal… I bought one via Craigslist for $75. We met in the Nuci’s Space parking lot before class in the summer of 2014. It turned out to be an early 90s unit, with the coveted LM308 chip. Pretty good deal! I used it for years. In a lot of ways, I’ve never been happier with my tone and playing than I was back then. A simpler time.
There are many pedal makers who have taken a stab at building a better mousetrap. I own and love many for different reasons!
Big Ear’s Woodcutter is a great, well-built unit that was meticulously hatched by measuring all the components of several especially good-sounding vintage pedals. Some components drift out of spec over time, and many vintage pedals used substitution parts without warning! Because of this, two “identical” vintage pedals can actually sound quite different ferom each other today! Big Ear played a whole bunch of pedals and Voltron-ed them together into what they found to be the perfect distortion. It’s a cool process, and the result is a great pedal that feels like the classic, but also like a modern pedal.
The Greer Amps Gorilla Warfare takes a similar approach. I know for a fact that Nick played several vintage units (including another 308 example I bought from craigslist… this one from the legendary Jim White!) and tested his prototype rigorously against them. The result is my favorite overall take: the thickest, most aggressive “I can’t believe it’s not vintage!” NOS 308 equipped pedal money can buy. Note: the tone control works the way it should. I said what I said!
In recent years, the most popular rodent pedal is undoubtedly the Black Mass 1312. The approach is simple: give people every reasonable option they could want! Internally switchable from 9v to 18v and with a rotary selector for virtually every hard clipping option you can imagine- including the official (but short-lived) “Turbo” mode with LED clipping. 1312 is ideal for all the tweakers and experimenters, and many available combinations offer sounds not attainable in the classic.
Of course the elephant in the room is the 1981 DRV. At one time, it was THE most hyped pedal on the market. Used pedals were commonly sold for more than double and triple MRSP. With a youth group icon at the helm and design assistance from the proven mastery of Bondi’s Jon Ashley, DRV has everything you could want from a branding standpoint. Honestly, the attention was deserved; the pedal is great! Hoops has long been a truther for the big box, white block model used as a low-gain, almost “pre-amp”-like tone generator (I’m going to hold myself back from going on a rant about why calling a pedal a pre amp is dumb). The DRV expands the range of this low-gain sweet spot by internally doubling to 18v for more headroom. The transistor output stage is also replaced with an op-amp, and most impactfully, another pre-clipping gain stage is added. All of this combined with a clever buffering scheme allows for wonderfully smooth operation and stable usability across the entire gain knob. In many ways, DRV is the perfect distortion pedal for a market that does not traditionally use distortion. I think that’s cool!
With all of that out of the way, you are likely wondering, “if you love this pedal archetype so much, and so many of them are awesome, why would you make one?” It’s a valid question. In a way, I think my answer is in the question. I love this ancestry, and I think all of them are awesome. I also think they can coexist. There are many mice, true, but I don’t find them to necessarily invalidate each other. I think there’s room for one more!
Enter Thank You.
Thank You was crafted and iterated meticulously over several years. I played a lot of pedals. I took a lot of notes. I looked at a lot of schematics. I made a lot of bad pedals. I made some decent pedals. And then I made what I think is a great pedal!
Thank You keeps some of the classic R.O.U.S. topology. In fact, the core of the classic circuit is sandwiched in between two op-amp gain stages. The frequency response is roughly congruent with the classic too- however the bass cut is less severe at lower gain settings. At maximum, the gain is similar between Thank You and classic units. But (in VERY basic and simplified layman’s terms) the gain is distributed more evenly across the three gain stages instead of being focused into one. That way, there are more useful “sweet spots” across the gain spectrum. In fact, there are some fantastic mid-gain, overdrive-like tones to be found in the first half of the gain control! Importantly, the overall output can now be much louder! The 3 stage approach also offers new places to massage the frequency response of the pedal. Nothing drastic! Adjustments were made to fill out the low end slightly (while still keeping it tight!) and smoothing off the ice-pick treble (while still keeping it very aggressive and as bright as you could ever want!)
I fought the urge to put a bunch of toggles and switches on Thank You. I am in no way disparaging pedals that do! But for me, and what I want Millstone to be, it just didn’t feel right. I want Thank You to feel plug and play. 3 knobs and the truth. I want it to “just work”. I want you to be able to go into a room with your friends, set all the knobs in the middle, and turn off your brain. Rock.
In some respects this actually makes the design more difficult. I have to make choices! If I can’t put a bunch of clipping options on a toggle, I have to find the best ONE. I have to pick the corner frequency for each gain stage. I have to choose the voltage. The tone knob can only work one way.
At the end of the day, Thank You emerged as a classic 3-knobber. The gain ranges from “dirt flavored la croix” at minimum to “falling apart big fuzzstortionstainer” at max. I replaced the “cut” style knob for a more… wonderful style tone control. Basically, it gets mellow to the left and brighter to the right. I would consider this “normal,” but to each their own. After trying for several iterations to make asymmetrical clipping (and briefly LED clipping) work, I settled on symmetrical silicon diode clipping. It immediately felt right. It absolutely ROARS when you want it to, you get that sweet touch of compression at low gain, and most of all, its got the texture you’re expecting to hear in a good distortion. I know it’s not super exciting or groundbreaking, but I’m not looking back.
For those wondering, Thank You runs internally at 9v. Standard pedal stuff. While I do like Thank You internally doubled at 18v, I don’t feel like it’s strictly better. Committing to a charge pump voltage doubling power scheme would have increased the parts count to the extent that I would have needed to raise the price of the pedal, and it absolutely would have increased the opportunity for them to break (or rather… get broken) out in the wild. This made the decision to stay at 9v pretty easy. Fortunately, this is a compromise that actually makes everyone happy! Most of you will prefer standard 9v operation, like I tend to. But for those of you who wish to try 18v, you absolutely can! Plug Thank You into the 18v output of your power supply and you’re ready to rock. You’ll find less noise, more clean headroom, and a glassy, articulate top end. It’s really nice! For those of you salty that there’s no LED clipping option, try running at 18v!
That gets us through most of the (elementary-level) technical stuff. Let’s talk goals. Let’s get into musical inspiration.
I wanted Thank You to achieve a handful of benchmark standards:
1) Excel at Blue/Pinkerton-era Weezer big-chord rhythm tones
2) Produce a satisfyingly tight palm-muted chug
3) Have enough volume + proper EQ curve to be used as a boost
4) Accomplish low/medium gain drive and boost sounds. The specific marks here were Death Cab For Cutie’s “Sound of Settling” and “Cath…”
5) make big rock emo caveman sound. Riffs. Chords. Octave leads. You know.
In my opinion, Thank You clears all of these hurdles and does even more! Some of my favorite “heavy” sounds are from Atlanta favorites Manchester Orchestra and Microwave. Thank You can do that. Man O’s “Cope” was absolutely a stock test riff. The overly-rectified sludge of Weezer’s “The World Has Turned and Left Me Here” never feels out of reach, even with a telecaster! Mid 00s “fake emo” favorites and their sugary octave leads leak out involuntarily. I basically learned every guitar part on From Under The Cork Tree while playtesting Thank You… an unintended consequence for sure! Playing mentally-ingrained riffs from my former bands felt more at home than ever. The all-out thickness of “Oh, Charise”; the stabby grind of “I Am’; the cutting echo lead of “Terrible Winter”. It’s all here, and for me, it’s never felt more right.
The absolutely most surprising product of Thank You’s final design is the first 30ish% of the gain control. It’s bonkers! The just-cutting overdrive sounds of the aforementioned DCFC tracks are there at the top of this range. Barely cracked open, the gain control offers a shot at the compressed, glassy twinkles of 90s Midwestern lore. This is unironically my favorite Thank You use case.
Yep. I said it. My favorite use of Thank You (a high-gain distortion pedal) is as a CLEAN BOOST. Gain barely open, tone around noonish, Volume to the moon. It turns my go-to Princeton into the Kool-Aid man. No wall is safe from this glass-coated battering ram of sheer sugary defiance. I used to strictly stage and order my gain pedals from lowest to highest gain. Not anymore. Placing Thank You BEFORE my always-on / low-gain / “base” overdrives changed everything for me. I’ll repeat the chorus of this blog: It just felt right.
All of this said, I’m not trying to tell you how to use Thank You, nor am I trying to imply that there is a correct way. I just want to share my experiences as a user, after sharing my experiences as a rock rodent researcher, after sharing my experiences as the “designer” (I really felt more like a passenger in the process, but I digress).
I want Thank You, and honestly Millstone as a whole, to be about music. Not about the pedal, or brand, or one guy’s personality, or whatever. Pedals are tools at the end of the day. The music you play is the real art. The joy you have playing with others is my real goal. In that way, I hope each of you who decide to try Thank have my experience, but in your own way. I hope you find a sound that makes your favorite songs fall out as easily as breathing. I hope your band’s songs feel new again. If we’re all lucky, you might find something that reshapes the way you consider using your tools. If nothing else, I hope the simplicity and intention behind Thank You’s configuration frees you up to just… plug in and play.
I guess that’s all I’ve got to say. It was a lot?
I recognize that Thank You may not be for you. I think that’s awesome! If one of the other RAD style pedals I described above sounds better to you… honestly, please go buy one! Go after what you like! Play what makes you happy!
Whatever you play,
I hope you mean it.
ps: here’s a playlist of some tone references i listened to while working on Thank You :)
Thank You
