This week Emily and Andrew are joined by legendary pedal builder Tom Cram. Tom used to be at Digitech/DOD and now he has his own brand of pedals, Spiral Electric FX!
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Outro song is “Little Pink Room” by Michelle Sullivan and the All Night Boys (feat. Emily on guitar)
Episode Transcript
Note: a machine made this, so it’s not perfect, but if you’re hearing impaired and have any questions about what we said, please feel free to ask us in the comments or send us an email with the form below.
Emily: [00:00:00] There we go. All right, I’m going to roll the intro.
Andrew: [00:00:21] welcome to the, get off set podcast. My name is Andrew
Emily: [00:00:23 and I’m Emily. We’re here. Yeah. We’re here with Tom cram from spiral fx. Is that right?
Tom Cram: [00:00:35] Spiral electric fx.
Emily: [00:00:37] Sorry, I’m getting distracted by a high pitched sound.
Andrew: [00:00:40] I think my smoke detectors going out, I’m going to go figure out why that’s going off and make sure that smaller humans in the area are not lighting things on fire.
I’ll be.
Emily: [00:00:55] What is starch? Sorry. Sorry, Tom.
Tom Cram: [00:01:00] No worries.
Emily: [00:01:01] How are you doing on this fine morning?
Tom Cram: [00:01:05] Do you do people call you M or just
Emily: [00:01:09] Emily? Uh, no. Uh, not many people call me M not many people are
Tom Cram: [00:01:15] allowed.
Emily: [00:01:19] No, but some people do and it’s usually fine, but, um, there was this one time, like I just, I thought against that nickname a long time, but, um, it typically like people who are really close to me or have lived with me, call me M because I get at three syllables a lot.
I remember once there’s a woman I worked with and she was younger and she was really kind of real, and I didn’t really like working with her. Um, she just, she just felt like she knew everything like coming into her first job. And I was trying to explain, like, just try to like help her writing be better.
That was part of the job, like writing concise social copy. And, uh, she was just really, was not good at taking constructive criticism things. Like, I think that he put this part in the beginning, it would just like flow better. She’s like, well, I think it’s fine. And that kind of stuff. And when she came up behind me and she it’s like M.
And, and, and finally turn I’m like, that’s not my name do not call me that
Tom Cram: [00:02:21] you never know. I have a, uh, an old friend named Emily and she goes by him. So if I, if I accidentally say it it’s because of habit,
Emily: [00:02:32] I don’t really get offended by it. Um, it’s, it’s kind of just like, I think that if someone irritates you as much as this woman irritated me, Yeah, it doesn’t matter what they like.
You don’t, you don’t deserve my nickname. I need to like you first, my husband doesn’t call me in, um, yeah. Sometimes I get a bit as a business email for like to get off that stuff and someone will call me and say like, thanks, Sam. I’m like, all right, weather.
Tom Cram: [00:03:04] Yeah. It’d be like somebody calling me Tommy. And I’m like, no, that’s reserved for my grandma.
Emily: [00:03:09] Yeah. Or M a my niece can call me any, but that’s okay.
Yeah.
Tom Cram: [00:03:20] Oh, he can’t hear me yet. Kenny.
Emily: [00:03:25] Oh, you’re on mute buddy.
Oh,
Andrew: [00:03:32] right next to each other.
Emily: [00:03:34] Yeah.
Andrew: [00:03:35] Oh my God. That’s my tummy. Um, I ready for that. Any of that? Um, I just looked this thing for five seconds straight and neither I have become immune to it at this point, or this is dead. Um, so how’s this not burning down, but talk about timing for it. Decide to, um, Hey, uh, you need to change your battery.
Emily: [00:03:57] Well, it has been about six months. Since most people change their batteries. Most people do have on like the, no, wait,
Andrew: [00:04:06] this is your, this is your reminder. Change the batteries on your smoke detector. Spend the $7 or whatever for the pack of nine volts from Costco and do that. Uh, that way in the future, when you’ve got distinguished guests on a podcast, you won’t have to walk away from them.
Emily: [00:04:26] Yeah, man, I, um, I lived in an apartment. My last apartment had one of those wired in smoke detectors, so we never had to change the battery and it was pretty fantastic.
Andrew: [00:04:36] That sounds nice. Um, I’m honestly, I’m surprised we had a smoke detector at a, I don’t know, this place is old and my landlord’s, um, I don’t know.
Tom Cram: [00:04:48] They’re not so strange alarm
Andrew: [00:04:51] happening.
Yeah. I was like, where is it? And so I just had to run outside, grab the ladder, check it for spiders. Cause that’s the thing in Seattle. Bring it
Emily: [00:05:02] inside. Yup.
Andrew: [00:05:06] I was walking out to work last week and just like straight face through a spiderweb. I’m like. Really in my beard, disrespect. I know it was bad.
Emily: [00:05:19] Been making some friends, the spiders.
Andrew: [00:05:23] Okay. Confession. I actually grabbed the step ladder first and then I couldn’t reach the smoke detector. So then I had to go outside. Cause I’m short.
Emily: [00:05:30] You still did that pretty quickly though.
Andrew: [00:05:33] Uh it’s uh, the extra speed that my star Wars flannel pajama bottoms. Give me.
Emily: [00:05:39] Oh, I was like, I hope those aren’t real jeans when I saw it.
Uh,
Andrew: [00:05:43] no, these are, uh, I’ve got tie fighters in the millennium, Falcon and X wings plastered all over these bad boys.
Emily: [00:05:49] Yeah. If you’re listening to the audio version of the podcast has a video version on YouTube and a, when Andrew got up, we could see his,
Andrew: [00:05:58] I wasn’t planning on standing. I brought all of my props this time.
So the front of the room, so I wouldn’t have to move.
Emily: [00:06:07] Cause it’s kind of embarrassing since you just had something embarrassing happening on the video. Sure. I let my niece paint my nails yesterday and it’s a little, like, it’s not the best Manny. It’s a little bossy though. I think Rick likes like, look at that one.
It’s not even whatever. Um, but she’s getting better at it though. My husband, he was like, he was like, I think I like, I like, I like the nail Polish, like I’ll buy nail Polish, but I would like for you to this morning, go out and buy nail Polish remover. Cause I can’t go out in public with my nails looking like that.
Yeah. Yeah. That’s a dark blue. Well, she’s really into Halloween, my niece and spooky stuff, which I appreciate because I’m into. I was always had the spooky stuff. When I was little, I’ve been watching the show evil on Netflix and they’re the main, it’s kind of like the X files, but instead of a guy who sits with aliens, it’s a guy, who’s a priest.
And. Uh, they’re like, there’s like exorcism stuff and demonic, possessions and miracles. And then the lady is a skeptic and the lady who is a skeptic, she has four daughters and they’re all obsessed with spooky stuff like zombies. And I’m like, I am into it. There’s a reason that horror movies have learned that their biggest fan base is teenage girls.
It’s because it’s true.
Tom Cram: [00:07:27] My wife loves horror movies, so I’ll, I’ll have to let her know that evil is good.
Emily: [00:07:32] Evil evil, like watching evil feel a little bit like watching the X files. It’s like, it’s kind of cheesy. It’s, you know, there’s some scary stuff in it, but it’s just like, it’s cheesy. It’s like a CVS or something normally.
So it’s not like a spooky, spooky. It’s not the, it’s not the haunting and blind manner. Now
Tom Cram: [00:07:52] I’m into, into horror novels and stuff like that. But there, and I like horror movies too, but my wife will watch like slasher stuff and I’m not into the slasher thing, but
Emily: [00:08:04] yeah, I just don’t like, I don’t like Gore like hell raiser. The first Hellraiser I had to turn that one off. I think I was kind of like, my stomach was feeling in a weird place. I’m like, ah, I don’t need to wash this goopy.
Tom Cram: [00:08:16] That’s an intense movie though, too. I mean, even now you watch Hellraiser one and it’s like, wow, how did that even get made
Andrew: [00:08:25] if I’m going to go? No, no. Well, a little bit. Yes and no, I like the psychological stuff. I like silence of the lambs. Brilliant. You want to talk? Saw love it, but. One it’s getting into the more demonic stuff and like, not as excited about it. I don’t know. And then exhales, how dare you disrespect. The X files,
Emily: [00:08:47] love X files.
Where did I disrespect to X, Y please. Cheesy stuff. I call the evil cheesy, actually. I’m sorry about evil, evil, cheesy, but the X files like, like the sure, fine whatever episode you can’t call that. Not cheesy.
Tom Cram: [00:09:06] Yeah,
Emily: [00:09:06] there’s
Tom Cram: [00:09:08] right. There’s some cheesy episodes next files, but I’m a big fan of X files.
Emily: [00:09:13] No, that’s fine.
I’ll say I’ve seen every episode actually. I think I miss part of the seasons where it was like the guy from T2 instead of David, the company.
Tom Cram: [00:09:24] Oh yeah. Uh, Patrick, um, Mixed
Emily: [00:09:29] up interests. See thing. Look at him.
Tom Cram: [00:09:32] I want to,
Andrew: [00:09:34] um,
Emily: [00:09:35] I love the X files. Good Lord.
Andrew: [00:09:37] Alright. Alright. Alright. But yeah, no, that’s, that’s kind of, I like scifi.
I like psychological stuff. That’s about, that’s what excites me, but nothing’s gonna like, make me like go to bed, like pissing myself. So it’s not likely. I say that now, and then someone’s going to recommend something. I’m going to sit down and watch it. And I’m going to end up like sleeping in the bathtub with an
Emily: [00:09:59] X that we watched recently that I think really messed up.
My husband. Was it open water? Really? Yeah. He can’t swim.
Tom Cram: [00:10:08] Oh, so there’s an extra layer there for him.
Emily: [00:10:11] I was like, I really wanted to watch this cause it’s like, it’s so low budget and it did so well. And that usually bodes well when, like it didn’t get a big budget, but people flocked to see it. And yeah, it just really, he was just sitting on the sofa like, Oh, I felt really bad about it.
Andrew: [00:10:33] Paddle paddle,
Emily: [00:10:36] but we had gone from hell raisers to open water. So a movie that was like making me feel just kind of nauseated. You make a movie that made him go, ah,
Andrew: [00:10:46] let’s go payback.
Tom Cram: [00:10:47] Yeah. I love like rotten tomatoes for stuff like that too. Cause I’m a huge scifi fan too, but there’s a lot of really bad scifi movies out there.
And so my rule is if it’s got over 65% on rotten tomatoes from the audience score, I’ll watch it. And usually it ends up being pretty good. But yeah, if you’re down in the forties, no, no bueno.
Andrew: [00:11:08] That’s you just gotta MST three K.
Tom Cram: [00:11:11] Oh yeah.
Andrew: [00:11:13] You got to sit down and choose an intoxicant of your choice and just make fun of it the entire way through, but just don’t even give it a chance.
It’s not worth it.
Emily: [00:11:25] No, that’s fine. I think it was just as long as you’re getting enjoyment out of what you’re watching. Um, but, uh, just to change the subject, cause we’re about 10 minutes and I know Andrew has a new pedal that he’s kind of excited to share.
Andrew: [00:11:39] I do. I, so I borrowed this exact unit, not the one in my hands.
I borrowed pedal from my friend CHAM over. It gives Sunday and tones room and I had it for about a month, month and a half and loved it. But the thing was borrowing because you have to give it back.
Emily: [00:11:58] I learned that the hard way for me to.
Andrew: [00:12:00] I know I had to give back a lot of things. I was borrowing yesterday for like going through myself.
Like I borrowed this from cam I borrowed this from Emily and it’s going to, okay. We’ll take two trips. So I ended up, I knew I had to give it back. I had to have one for myself, so I ended up buying one. I did it, I purchased it. It’s mine. I don’t have to give this back to anybody. I haven’t even
Emily: [00:12:21] taken Ernie ball Yuma pedal tuner.
Andrew: [00:12:26] If you want that, now you can see the camera in reverse. Um, but it’s even got, it’s even got the plastic. So we’re gonna try something. I’m going to turn up the gain on this just a little bit.
Emily: [00:12:48] Nice. Read a little bit about your phone notification, Andrew.
Tom Cram: [00:12:53] Well, that was actually my knife
for your phone notification. Some others like, yes. What I’ve always been waiting for,
Andrew: [00:13:06] because nothing says I someone’s calling you like, Hey, SMR,
Emily: [00:13:12] that, that like the anxiety version of SMR is just a phone notification going off and you can’t get to your phone and you’re like, Oh
Tom Cram: [00:13:19] yeah,
Emily: [00:13:19] somebody, somebody who’s in the stand.
Yeah, I got a new, I got a new phone yesterday and I was doing the transfer from old iPhone to new iPhone, which is really, really cool how easy that is to do truly. Um, but it takes like two hours. And it was still like doing all the notifications and text messages, but you can’t see any of them because both of your phones are out of commission.
And you’re like, Oh,
Tom Cram: [00:13:46] is passing me by.
Emily: [00:13:48] I had, it’s
Andrew: [00:13:49] like a smoke detector except you can’t take the battery out
Emily: [00:13:53] ad. We were supposed to see my husband, my husband, I were supposed to go visit my brother. Last time we did. But, uh, before that was like, can you just text my brother and let him know that my phone’s not working and to just kind of go through you for phone stuff, because I don’t want him to think I’m ignoring him for two hours.
Tom Cram: [00:14:09] Well, yeah, I gotta say that, uh, um, as much as I’ve come to rely on, on my phone and text messages, um, I went over plan or sorry, we went over plan last month. And so we had to turn off a bunch of stuff. So when I was traveling to the shop and back, I had my phone off and I got to say, That was actually a pleasure, not having my phone all the time and not having to worry about it.
Somebody texted me all. I’m going to stop light. It was nice. Come to reliant.
Andrew: [00:14:38] That’s why I know I don’t want wifi and airplanes. Maybe it’s that no more. I want my boss to know that I’m on an airplane that he can’t not reach me.
Emily: [00:14:50] I’ll work on the plane joke. Yeah. Yeah.
Andrew: [00:14:56] Well, anyways, I Ernie ball, a volume tutor, a VP junior tuner, and it’s even got the effects loop on the back. And, uh, I’m in love buffered effects loop, which is kinda neat. Um, so that was new for me this week. The other thing new for me this week, um, well sort of, not new for me, but for everybody else’s, I’ve been selling these shirts and I sold a lot more than
Tom Cram: [00:15:17] what it’s a theme volume pedals swell
Andrew: [00:15:21] found that out for a second.
Emily: [00:15:24] It is smell
Andrew: [00:15:25] with my soul. And the graphics is almost the same size as this, which is kinda neat. But yeah, no, I sold a lot more than I thought I was going to, and I just wanted to say, thank you for everyone who bought a shirt. And I’m really excited to see photos. First photo that came in through my newsfeed.
Someone tagged me in it like, Hey look, Andrew, I got my shirt. I’m like, I actually cried a little bit, not like full, full frame, but like they’re like
Emily: [00:15:50] itch.
Andrew: [00:15:51] Yeah. So that, there’s something special about other people looking at something that I made and like, I want that I want to wear that.
Tom Cram: [00:15:58] So
Emily: [00:15:59] it’s kind of cool.
Nice.
Tom Cram: [00:16:01] So actually I feel that it’d be really, is it feels like when somebody likes your song seriously, it’s like, wow. I had a connection with someone I’ll be at brief.
Emily: [00:16:16] Yeah. We just got an email from our publicist about somebody who likes a Sunday crush song. And I was like, Oh my God, I love this person who likes the song.
And she likes my son. I didn’t have anything to do with it, but I play it sometimes. But yeah, I got something new kind of thanks to Andrew. Is this, this is a thing that was proctored through Andrew.
Is it.
Andrew: [00:16:42] I was under the impression it was smallish.
Emily: [00:16:45] Yeah. It’s a pod go.
Andrew: [00:16:49] And I’m excited.
Emily: [00:16:51] Yeah. So this is, uh, this was sent to us by our friends. I guess Andrew’s friends at line six and, uh, this is something I’m going to demo. And then I’m just going to give to Andrew as a birthday gift.
Andrew was like, and was like, what you do more, what can I buy it from you? From like, like a friend rate? I’m like, yeah, sure. Just tell me what’s fair. And he’s like, Oh, this is not ready, lady. You just I’m like there’s
Andrew: [00:17:18] no years. The ones that I was looking at and reverb it. And there’s no buying guide. I’m like, I don’t know what a fair price is.
Emily: [00:17:24] I thought that’s what you, I thought you were hinting at. Give it to me the whole time, honestly,
Andrew: [00:17:31] because I don’t want to offer you like 200 bucks for it. Cause I would seem rude, but. Anyways. I appreciate it.
Tom Cram: [00:17:41] I’ve got something here. I just finished this bill the sec.
Andrew: [00:17:46] Okay. I’m excited.
Emily: [00:17:49] Oh. Oh, why does that look so familiar? Oh my God. What? Okay. Now
Tom Cram: [00:17:56] tone, tone, bakery, body. Um, triple peanuts. And a sale a few months ago, then I put a, a mighty my neck on it with uh dispersals and, uh, that’s yeah, that’s my latest bill.
That sounds freaking great.
Emily: [00:18:14] That looks so much like a guitar I was just working on. I was just working on an offset Marisa with that same body, same pit guard and all the configuration. And he wanted to put those kind of like aluminum lace pickups are supposed to be dropping 90 replacements, but are not in a wiring kit from Gunn street.
And I was trying to put the lace pickups and AMS a video for the Patriot and supporters, because if you’re, if your sports on Patrion, you get bonus content. And part of that is the soldering videos. Cause I don’t want the world to see them. I’m just like assembling this guitar. I put the wire new wiring harness and I’m figuring it out.
I finally, I take out the old pickups and try to drop the new ones in and they don’t friggin and they don’t fit because they’re not actually, they’re not actually dropping replacements. They’re more square. So just kind of like resting on the hole. And I, I messaged the guy. I’m like, I’m not going to drill into your guitar.
I refuse to drill into someone else’s guitar. Like that’s just like electronic soldering. I can do all day. I love soldering, but I’m. Not going to do something irreversible on someone else’s guitar ever. Um, cause I’m not here. I’m not going to hack into it with my grandfather’s planar, like now,
so yeah, I have no, uh, so he understood and I just, I finished the wiring. I was showing him, so I’m like, you just take off the strings and then you can do the little and then you’ll just be, it’ll be done. It’ll be fine. I’ll be easy. And, uh, Because he didn’t want to take it. Like the turn around time right now for guitar work is long because everyone was so they, everyone was closed for months for COVID.
So like to take it to Mike and Mike’s, it would have been like mid November by the time it got done. But yeah, as I was holding the time, like, this is really cool.
Tom Cram: [00:20:11] And so
Andrew: [00:20:12] congratulations on your new build.
Tom Cram: [00:20:14] Cute. And it turned out really cool. The tone bakery guy has it wired up in a really cool way. Um, the, the middle is reverse wound.
Um, but it’s always okay. So no matter how you switch it, it’s always noise canceling and you have a two volume controls, so you can blend that in and out. And so, yeah, it’s, it’s, uh,
Andrew: [00:20:33] uh,
Tom Cram: [00:20:34] I haven’t ever, I had, I had a, um, a P 90 wiring like that, but it makes a difference. It sounds a little, a little, a little different from a regular P 90, because of that reverse wound, but it’s still all day long.
Andrew: [00:20:47] Sure. Yeah. I don’t know if, when we edit, it’s going to be in frame. So let me describe it, but I’ve got this guy right here.
Emily: [00:20:56] It’s a Telecaster for the homelessness.
Andrew: [00:20:59] That’s my, a modern player. ThinLine Telecaster. That was my first guitar. I bought it in 2000, 2011, 2012 have been 2011 and I love the thing, but that’s always been like the one thing I’m like, I just want it little less noise out of it.
sound great. Just the noise can be a little bit much. I’ve always been. Anytime someone says I’ve got P90X and there’s some sort of noise canceling going on. I’m like, tell me more. Should I, should I do that myself?
Tom Cram: [00:21:26] Yeah, you can do it. You could do a dummy coil on that or something like that and hide under the pit guard.
Andrew: [00:21:31] Ooh, I like that.
Tom Cram: [00:21:33] I’ve heard of that. Do that. And it works pretty well.
Andrew: [00:21:38] I’m going to think about
Tom Cram: [00:21:39] that.
Andrew: [00:21:46] I haven’t opened this thing up in a while. I’d say a few years. I don’t remember, but it’s a semi hollow. There’s always room, right?
A little bit of superglue on it and just stick it against the side and feed it through the ground.
Tom Cram: [00:21:59] Yeah. It doesn’t matter what really can be anywhere.
Emily: [00:22:04] That’s interesting.
Andrew: [00:22:07] I don’t think I’ve ever considered that before. Now my mind is like spinning in every direction going, I need to do this now.
Emily: [00:22:13] Yeah.
This cab Bernita, how noisy it is. Those are, those are single coils for the jazz mass and the staple coils, but that’s pretty noisy. Oh, is
Tom Cram: [00:22:21] that one of the new
Andrew: [00:22:23] Britain,
Tom Cram: [00:22:23] alternate universe fenders. Is that what that is? So you got to
That’s cool.
Emily: [00:22:34] Yeah, I like it a lot. It feels, it feels really nice. It feels like a much more expensive guitar than it is. My husband likes it too.
Tom Cram: [00:22:44] Yeah, I liked it.
Emily: [00:22:47] I liked it. I like the, the black and the white guitars of the black pit guards. I’m a big fan of. I have a bunch, but they’re not all hanging up behind me.
Tom Cram: [00:22:56] If
Andrew: [00:22:56] it’s not going to be orange, then I suppose that it will do
I have a slight obsession with orange
Emily: [00:23:04] slide.
Andrew: [00:23:08] So it can be in frame this week.
Emily: [00:23:09] I was about to say, but now your head’s blocking it.
Andrew: [00:23:12] I know. And any, swap it with a base.
Tom Cram: [00:23:15] What makers that.
Andrew: [00:23:18] Uh, this one’s a Jennings and I actually got it at Nam, um, or picked it up at Nam. Let’s avoid your deluxe
Tom Cram: [00:23:25] in it’s unseen of bounds and blocking lanes.
Andrew: [00:23:37] All right. So
Tom Cram: [00:23:38] let’s see
Andrew: [00:23:38] how close we got the dog hair on it
Tom Cram: [00:23:41] all. That’s a beauty.
Andrew: [00:23:44] And then the back on it and yeah, double bound body bound in blast, neck matching headstock. And this thing is my dream.
Tom Cram: [00:23:57] How do you like that? To be three Bigsby?
Andrew: [00:24:05] I haven’t had a guitar with Bixby before, but I’m, uh, I’m really loving it. Actually. It’s got, it’s got the nice kind of feel for women. Cause I don’t, I don’t do any dive bombs or anything too crazy these days. So it’s just nice at the end of like a whole note or something. Just give it a little bit of touching they’re
Emily: [00:24:21] subtle and shimmery
Tom Cram: [00:24:23] usually fan too.
Love it. I’m not a huge orange fan. Um, I’ve got, I have a Fernandez H series. I don’t know if you guys are familiar with that, but it’s a creamsicle orange. So I’ll right. And do you picture of it if you’re, if you’re, uh, obsessed with orange, cause it’s about as orange as
Emily: [00:24:39] you did
Andrew: [00:24:41] send me a picture. I’ll check it out.
Emily: [00:24:43] When a test is obsessed,
Andrew: [00:24:45] I might even drool just this page.
Emily: [00:24:47] Just a little bit, just a good drill.
Andrew: [00:24:50] I should probably see a therapist about that,
Emily: [00:24:52] but. There is there’s priorities. Well,
Andrew: [00:24:56] uh, why don’t we think our sponsors, then we’ll jump into the episode. How about, how about that?
Emily: [00:25:01] So they get off set podcast is sponsored by my therapist, Morgan.
Now this week’s episode of the get off set podcast is sponsored by this show kid a they make it easy and affordable to put your music online. Spotify, Instagram stories, iTunes, Apple music, title, Napster, Deezer, iHeart, whatever they are now. Um, and I did a video last week going through some of the fun features, including, uh, they have, uh, a meme video generator.
And so I put one of my songs into that, Yoda me where his baby Yoda. And he’s turning the thing on, on a spaceship. And then it’s like, it’s nice playing my music. And then the Mandalorian turns it off and baby, and it turns it back on. And it was like pretty cute. And that one that was free, that costs $0 and 0 cents.
Like that was, that was quality entertainment.
Andrew: [00:25:52] It was super cute. And also a good reminder that we are the day. This episode comes out, we are, uh, 14, 15, 16, 17 days away. From Mandalorian dropping season two.
Tom Cram: [00:26:05] Oh, nice.
Emily: [00:26:06] Nice.
Tom Cram: [00:26:07] I’m excited for that. This is the way
Emily: [00:26:09] I will. Once again, wait for all of the episodes to air, then I will get a one month of Disney plus, and then I will bench.
Tom Cram: [00:26:18] We do the same thing. Probably not they’re part of their business model.
Emily: [00:26:25] Yeah.
Andrew: [00:26:26] Well, I mean, it’s the only original content they’ve got on the show or on the, on the platform. That’s, that’s not already been released out into the public. So I guess not original content, but I like platform specific content. Everything else is
Tom Cram: [00:26:42] what would you say? The ratio of good to mediocre episodes of Mandalorian
where.
Emily: [00:26:50] Yeah, I didn’t. I thought maybe it was pretty cute and I really liked Amy Sedaris and it, and I just felt like, okay. I was just, I think that season one, I usually let a lot slide at a season one because I think it takes a while for a good show to find its footing. So
Andrew: [00:27:08] I think there is maybe two to two or three episodes that are okayed from the restaurant.
Phenomenal.
Tom Cram: [00:27:13] I’m right there with you. Um, I, there were a couple of others. I was like, ah, this is kind of getting into, you know, um, George, our beings territory. Um, but the rest of them are great.
Andrew: [00:27:25] That must have been a lot of people really hated, um, was the tattooing episode. And I gotta say that wood is one of my favorites and actually think they do a really solid job with it.
Tom Cram: [00:27:35] The, the, the, the, the female bounty Hunter, right. Yup.
Emily: [00:27:39] Yup. Yup. I liked that one too.
Andrew: [00:27:41] Yeah, that was the episode thing. He said, Doris, a lot of people really didn’t like it for a couple of things. I thought it was they’re pandering to fans and like I’m not complaining. All right. Um, uh, and then the, the scene with the, with the sand people in the sign language, and people were like, well, we don’t like that either.
I’m like, I don’t know. It’s just adding layers.
Emily: [00:28:01] It’s okay. It’s okay. To not like things, but don’t like, as you say, don’t you have someone else’s yeah. But I do that a lot. So
Andrew: [00:28:12] yeah. I like to say I don’t yuck. Someone’s I’m young. I don’t need to know what tickles your pickle and I don’t
Emily: [00:28:19] man. That’s I don’t, I don’t, I don’t need to know.
I don’t, I don’t care. I don’t care. I don’t care like this. Don’t tell me those things. And I’ve gotten messages from guys who I think thought they were like, meaning. Well, and then they were like, we’re just like every time I see, what was it, guitar. I just get like, Titillated I’m like, I don’t care about it was your therapist.
Oh yeah. I’ve gotten that.
Tom Cram: [00:28:43] That’s weird.
Emily: [00:28:44] It is weird. Great. I don’t talk to, I try to not talk to that person, but. Yeah, it’s out there. So
Tom Cram: [00:28:51] my wife actually accuses me. She says the only, the only, the only part of my life where I’m I’m sexist is with a female vocalist. And I move, she first told me, I’m like, what, what are you talking about?
She’s not, it looks at your collection. How many female vocalists do you have? And I went through and I’m looking and I’m like, Oh my God. She’s right. But it was like a totally unconscious thing, but. This is like a weird tie in, but even with the female vocalists that I like, I would, it would never crossed my mind to send them an email saying, Oh, that’s pretty fantastic.
Sorry, I’ll start
Emily: [00:29:25] ramping up. You need to share that. Although,
Tom Cram: [00:29:30] you know, my wife or other female friends, that the guys will come out of the blue with just weird comments and emails like that too. So I don’t know.
Emily: [00:29:39] Yeah, a guy just messaged us the word com one day. I was like, why?
Andrew: [00:29:46] Yeah.
Emily: [00:29:48] That’s not great.
Andrew: [00:29:49] I’m solicited.
Not fun. Anyway. That’s all right. That’s their sponsorship bit
Tom Cram: [00:29:53] for districts.
Emily: [00:29:55] I might, I might cut that in post if you’re interested in trying out this show kid, Daniel, Daniel. I’m so sorry, Daniel. Her kids like we trusted you. Well, if you’re interested in trying out the stroke kid, well, now it’s a memorable sponsor shop sponsor spot.
If you’re interested in trying out this Joe kid, you can save 7% on your first year with the link in the video description. And that helps support the podcast directly and financially. And you’re also interested in, in a, Oh shoot. It’s the week Andrew it’s the week of the Patrion naming all the people, because we had the milestone on Patrion where we are now we have set some goals and we’re not gonna discuss the other goal.
If you want to see the other goal, you must go to, uhm, you must go to pastry on.com/get offset and help us get to that goal. Cause I’m not going to say it out loud. But, uh, now I get to name, I get to name every single one of our 23 patrons, because that was the thing. So, uh, I would like to, firstly, apologize if I get your name wrong, I am going to go through these very quickly.
I’m going to name them. And Andrew is going to say, thank you, David issues, ACA AKA, the timber owls. This is banned. Jay Ryan Conklin.
Andrew: [00:31:27] Thank you, Lauren
Emily: [00:31:29] Kelly. Thank you, Dan Morrison.
Andrew: [00:31:33] Thank you very
Emily: [00:31:33] much, Andrea. K,
Andrew: [00:31:36] thank you, David
Emily: [00:31:38] Mulvaney.
Andrew: [00:31:40] Thank you,
Emily: [00:31:41] Patrick pine. Thank you, Damien Martinez.
Andrew: [00:31:45] Thank you,
Emily: [00:31:46] Paul Heisenberg.
Thank you, Tyler Cochran. Juan Ortiz. Steve Rao, Tom Kelley, Stephen Davies, Mark Pac-Man. Thank you, Joe Braga. Thank
Andrew: [00:32:05] you,
Emily: [00:32:06] Jason wiser. Thank you, Jim burns.
Andrew: [00:32:09] Thank you,
Emily: [00:32:10] Zach Hale, Elia Franson. Thank you, Jeff Covey, no Barnett, a barn owl cello.
Tom Cram: [00:32:20] Sure.
Andrew: [00:32:21] If I could make an owl sound for this, instead of saying thank you.
I would, but I’m just going to say thank you.
Emily: [00:32:26] And our first, our original patron, Jason .
Andrew: [00:32:31] Thank
Emily: [00:32:31] you. He was the first one he found, he found the tape Patrion before we started promoting it
Andrew: [00:32:39] that, Oh, gee, love it
Emily: [00:32:42] until someone just found it. So is that
Tom Cram: [00:32:44] one of those things? Where are you saying thank you enough that it starts to sound weird underneath your tongue and you’re like, I’m not sure I can say this right anymore.
Andrew: [00:32:54] It’s enough to make me really question how strange the English languages, but I’m not tired of saying thank you because I love all of our Patriots sponsors.
Emily: [00:33:03] That’s the right answer
Andrew: [00:33:04] right there we go.
Emily: [00:33:06] Said, um, Donka, shin, uh, Maris there. Osseous um,
Andrew: [00:33:14] What’s your, uh, mazel Tov. No, that’s not it.
Emily: [00:33:17] Um, that’s more like a you’re welcome.
Andrew: [00:33:20] Um,
Emily: [00:33:21] just to say, imagine if we just said you’re welcome before we, instead of saying thank you to each one of these Jason . You’re welcome. No, can I say I’m telling you you’re welcome. You’re welcome
Tom Cram: [00:33:36] friends. It sounds like.
Emily: [00:33:38] I know
Andrew: [00:33:39] some good folks,
Emily: [00:33:41] everybody who does that, um, Andrew and I actually just ran the numbers. Oh, I just ran the numbers, Andrew. And as of, uh, I think just the other month we are as, as a podcast and gear to my channel no longer in the red, on our direct expenses for the podcast, including website hosting, podcast, hosting, um, the tools we use to record the podcast.
Even expenses like getting Andrew and I both so used launchers to improve our audio quality,
Andrew: [00:34:12] got to do something to make my voice sound palatable.
Emily: [00:34:15] Yeah. Thank you to all of you. Uh, as we said, last week, you’ve made this a less financially irresponsible endeavor.
Andrew: [00:34:22] Yes. And that is very much appreciated.
Tom Cram: [00:34:28] So that the saw use is that the mic you guys are using.
Emily: [00:34:32] Uh, no, it’s, um, it’s, I it’s, it’s like a cloud lifter and a preamp. Okay. Just a little boxy thing and you plug it and then you put the Phantom power and it makes things like SM 57. It gives them, um, more volume is the most obvious difference in a nice character, because this, if you’re curious, I didn’t do a demo.
Uh, that where I sink into it, I play play guitar into it and I can especially hear the difference on a, my guitar. It’s really neat.
Tom Cram: [00:35:02] Cool.
Emily: [00:35:03] There’s like less buzz and room sound. Yeah, it was, it was a nice fun experiment
Andrew: [00:35:09] after having one for about a month, month and a half. Now. I can’t believe I hadn’t had one sooner and yeah, I I’m going to have fun with this.
I might need to buy more.
Emily: [00:35:24] Right now
Andrew: [00:35:25] I’m using mine right now. And, uh, Mike I’m using is actually just a shirt. just with a little do that on it. It doesn’t even fit. I don’t know if he can see, but it doesn’t even reach the bottom of it.
Emily: [00:35:38] Oh,
Andrew: [00:35:40] But it’s good enough as a pop filter.
Emily: [00:35:42] Yeah.
Andrew: [00:35:44] Alright. Well, let’s change subjects a little bit here.
I know I’m lacking in a really like classy transition, but Tom, we’re having you on the show and we want to hear more about your background because you have done some phenomenal things. For those of us listening, remind us what company you are. Uh, you started off
Tom Cram: [00:36:07] with. Um, so I started working, uh, for Digitech and DOD, uh, in 95 ish.
Um, I started on the production floor, uh, building RPS and stomp boxes and stuff like that. And then I worked at, in the DOD marketing department, um, after that, um, with a little bit of a transition to, uh, what is called, we call it sound test, which is where a bunch of musicians were in the room. And we test all the pedals that were made and that kind of stuff.
Um, and I, then I switched over from there to working for DBX. I worked for DBX for about 11 years. So, um, a long time and then, uh, switch from, uh, DVX to, uh, Harman pro um, the pro audit division. Um, and I worked there all the way up until 2011, I think. Oh, and then I moved from Harman pro to Digitech and DOD again, and I started there as artists relations.
And then after that, I shifted over to a product manager and then running the place. And I ran it for about eight, about eight years, a little, a little less than eight years. And so that’s, that’s my main history. Then after, uh, Samsung bought, uh, Harmon. Um, I started spiral spiral electric effects, and I’ve been doing that for the past a little over, uh, just notice about two years now.
So my own company and that’s kind of the last 20 ish years in a nutshell,
that’s
Andrew: [00:37:46] a, that’s a big nutshell. Holy cow,
Emily: [00:37:50] full disclosure. I couldn’t hear all of that.
Andrew: [00:37:55] Kinda just a little bit, but I got most of it.
Emily: [00:37:58] Yeah. And, and sometimes it cuts out for us, but since it’s recording locally, I think the listeners will hear everything just fine, but couldn’t hear a lot of them.
Tom Cram: [00:38:08] All right. Well, I
Emily: [00:38:10] don’t want to
Tom Cram: [00:38:11] bore anybody, but going through a review, I guess the quick thing is I worked for Harman for 20 plus years and then ran Digitech for a and DOD for
Emily: [00:38:19] eight.
Nice
Andrew: [00:38:25] and talk about impact that that’s had on a, a whole lot of people. I know for myself, I’ve got a handful of the pedals, um, from you guys right here.
Emily: [00:38:35] Oh, that’s fine. He’s got my four 40.
Andrew: [00:38:38] This is year four 40, but I’ve adopted it for now. Um, as
Emily: [00:38:42] my B box,
Andrew: [00:38:45] I’ve got an effect 65 and that effect 67. I’ve got the volume and expression here and I think that’s all I’ve got right this moment.
Um, but that’s what I’ve had right now is, Oh, I’ve got a rubberneck as well.
Emily: [00:38:58] Oh, you did? Yeah.
Tom Cram: [00:39:00] You got actually a bunch of the stuff
Emily: [00:39:02] that rubber neck.
Tom Cram: [00:39:04] Thank you that took a long time at a labor of love for us.
Andrew: [00:39:10] Rubber neck is I, I love it.
Emily: [00:39:14] It’s really loves it.
Andrew: [00:39:17] I remember it came out that at the same time, the MXR carbon copy deluxe came out.
Remember just looking at the two side by side. And I was, I think I was working at guitar center at the time and I’m just like, Why would anyone go with the MXR? This is so much, this sounds better. It’s got more features. Like, what are you guys doing? Just like one, like every person that came through to buy it, it’s a carbon copy deluxe.
I just kind of want to check it out and like stop making bad choices.
Emily: [00:39:44] Oh, word or pedal. Yeah. I had the regular carbon copy for awhile and
Tom Cram: [00:39:48] it was fine. Carbon copies is a great pedal. I mean, it’s fine, but my board for a while, too. I dunno, the rubberneck is, um, it was very much a labor of love. It took us almost five years to, to create.
Um, I drew it out on a napkin really early on, on, you know, the basic layout for it and what features I wanted on there and the, the, what I drew on the napkin and what actually you’ve got produced were very, very similar. There was only like, you know, the, the rubberneck feature was pretty much the only thing that changed from that, that, uh, that napkin drawing.
But it was cool because, um, it was one of those projects where even though it took a long time to do, and we had a lot of resistance from the higher ups, all the guys on my team really believed in it. So it was something where, you know, it would, it would always get pushed forward and everyone would be like, you know, where are we on this project?
And that kind of stuff. So even though it’s kind of idiosyncratic pedal, um, and he was, it was, I kind of designed it for myself. It ended up being fairly universal, a lot of guitar players bigot. So I did did something right.
Emily: [00:41:00] You did. I love exactly how. I always say this in the demos. Um, I really appreciate any pedal that goes weirder than it that you might think that it needs to cause it’s, it’s one thing to like pull back a pedal and like, be like, Oh, this goes weird or that I want it to, but if you want it to go like extra and it doesn’t do that, that’s so discipline.
Tom Cram: [00:41:22] So it’s interesting you say that because that’s actually one of the changes that I really championed when I, when I resurrected DOD. And started doing the revamp and the Digitech. Cause I felt like a lot of the stuff up to that point was really, um, really polite. Um, cause there’s, there’s like the Jason land here where stuff was crazy.
Yeah. And then for a long time going, going through, you know, the, the, the later FX series and into the hardware stuff, it felt really, I don’t want to say boring cause that’s the wrong word. I just felt really polite. And so I kind of wanted to bring back that craziness and, and not rub off, you know, all of the sharp edges, you know, the
Emily: [00:42:01] rock and roll illness of
Tom Cram: [00:42:02] it.
Yeah. There you go. It’s gotta be a little bit scary, you know, you gotta turn on a pedal and go, Oh geez. This might blow my speakers.
Emily: [00:42:12] Neat back. Yeah, there you go.
Andrew: [00:42:16] No, I’ve been looking for one of these for awhile and they started clearing them out and I had some cash like. I gotta grab one before they disappear.
Um, after, after the buyout. Cause I was like, I hit that moment. Like, I don’t know if this is going to come back and I don’t want to, I don’t want to be wrong if I decided to pass
Tom Cram: [00:42:37] to tell you the truth. Um, the, the, uh, the chip is no longer produced. Um, you, you can make it, you can make some other chips do the same thing, but the, the actual original chef is no longer produced.
Um, so there’s that technical hurdle, but also the, the, the way that the, the Digitech and DOD are now with Samsung, I mean, there’s, I just don’t see how they can, I don’t see them producing anymore DOD stuff other than what they already have.
Andrew: [00:43:07] And that breaks my heart. It
Tom Cram: [00:43:09] is, it is kind of.
It’s it’s it’s bittersweet. Cause on the one hand, uh, while I feel like we were, we’re really hitting our stride and doing cool stuff. Um, it also, we also ended on a high note, you know what I mean? It’s not like we fell into this weird decline where you’re making crappy stuff for 10 years. It’s like we’re bam, bam, bam.
Cool, cool, cool. And then nothing. So it’s kind of like, um, you know, leaving on a high note, I guess.
Emily: [00:43:40] Yeah, that’s true way. Look at it. You’re just staring at it. I know. I’m
Andrew: [00:43:48] really morbid thought that the, really more of a thought that just hit my head is like select the 27 club. Cause there’s so many great musicians that have just got out like that.
Um, and in their prime. Uh, so that’s, that’s like, that’s really sad to think about it like that. I don’t know why my brain went there, but no, I mean, I love this stuff. It’s so inspiring and it really
Emily: [00:44:08] bums me out.
Andrew: [00:44:10] Yeah, that’s something we talked about last week is I right? Making sure that there’s units on the market that are accessible to beginner players with limited budgets that are still inspiring and not just this polite, I’ll say it boring.
And these don’t leave. These don’t look, find my, I don’t find myself feeling lacking when I’m playing through this kind of stuff. So
Emily: [00:44:36] yeah, they were still polite. I think that the phaser two Oh one was hold. Hello?
Tom Cram: [00:44:41] Yeah. I mean, it’s, it’s a tool it’s a two stage phase or so doesn’t it. Doesn’t get all crazy sweet.
And actually, so I’m a, I’m a nerd and in my opinion, two-stage phasers and fuzzes fit together better when you have a four stage or higher and a five is a distributed swirly mess, which is useful sometimes. But, uh, I don’t know. I just feel like, you know, stage phasers and fuzzes or, or peanut butter and jelly.
Emily: [00:45:09] No, I wish I’d tried that. Sound
Tom Cram: [00:45:14] cause you get that, you get that sweet, but it’s not overpowering. And you know, so you have a little, a little bit of movement, but it’s not like a, it doesn’t take the, the front of the stage. That’s support. It’s nice, but you’re right. Yeah. The two Oh, ones more on the polite side.
I should, I should have done an extra thing on there in retrospect. Like maybe make it, I have a switch, so you can go from today or something, but
Emily: [00:45:45] yeah.
Well now you have spiral spiral electronics.
Tom Cram: [00:45:53] It’s fire electric effects now. Um, and I haven’t done any modulations yet, so maybe that’s I should go do some, do some phase, maybe some flange, you know, track down some. Some good old DVDs with, yeah. I’ve been concentrating mostly on, on dirt and stuff like that until I get my sea legs and can get more complicated.
So I’ve only been in business for
Emily: [00:46:17] about
Tom Cram: [00:46:18] two years, so
Emily: [00:46:21] yeah. What kind of, what else do you have right now? I haven’t gotten to play any of them.
Andrew: [00:46:25] Oh. I got to play him at Nam and they’re sick.
Tom Cram: [00:46:27] Thank you.
Emily: [00:46:28] Okay. It in,
Tom Cram: [00:46:30] well, let me, let me do a quick one. I’ve got, uh, my first pedal was the black spiral FAS and that’s, um, kind of a, um, a more evolved take on the car.
Cosa funds that I did it at a DOD, um, instead of having the, um, uh, the high, low. Uh, switch. It has a three-way toggle, um, for the clipping section and I’m using the Nana log into, Oh, I think I’ve got one right here. Yeah. So here’s, here’s some of the tin can monologues. So then the analog is actually an interesting technology it’s um, I don’t know if you can see that.
But I’ll put it on my giant forehead so you can kind of see it on that bag. So I used an analog and two on there, and I mix it with a Silicon in one position and then a germanium in the other. And, uh, then the next is the, uh, yellow spiral, um, uh, drive. And that is a, uh, I’m a huge fan of the DOD two-fifty.
And so the, the yellow is kind of a, uh, a take on that, but it has a, what I call the girth control and what that is is it’s a, uh, a cap network that allows you to shave off, um, the, the low end. And it makes it so that you can actually focus and tied it up. So when you’re running it into like a dirty and dirty ass channel, um, it doesn’t get overwhelming and women with the base.
And it also has a threeway clipping control too. So it goes from led to an analog, um, to, uh, Silicon and the Silicon and the, and the led sections are blended with an analog. So you always have a little bit of an analog flavor. Um, and that, and that’s the yellow. And then I have the,
Andrew: [00:48:24] I was just gonna say, I remember specifically playing through that one, like cranking the game up and playing with the girth knob and finding myself like, wait that’s. That’s something that I’ve always wanted out of a two 50, um, when I play with like high gain stuff and now like having it just kind of build interesting, just like mindblowing that like really caught my attention.
Tom Cram: [00:48:44] Cool, man. It’s the two 50 circuit is weird. So there’s been a lot of people who have done takes on the two 50. Um, And the normal thing that people do is like, Oh, you know, the obvious, but this needs to have as a tone control. And so they throw in a tone control. And in my head opinion that the two 50 is a lot like the fuss face, where it’s a small number of parts.
And so if you do anything radical too, it just makes it into a completely different pedal. If you add a tone of 50, it turns into something else. And in my opinion, not great. And so the, the, the girth control allows you to have some total control without screwing up the basic voicing of the, of the two 50.
And, you know, one of the cool things about the two 50 is if your guitar still sounds like your guitar and your AMS still sounds like your amp, you just getting, you know, more, more hair, so you don’t want to mess with that. You know what I mean?
Andrew: [00:49:35] I think it’s a better incarnation of like a blues breaker type response where you still want that organic sound out of your guitar and amp tool, the more hair
Tom Cram: [00:49:44] to it.
Awesome. Let’s see. And then, so that’s my opinion brings us to the brute and the brute is, um, a fuzz, but it’s kind of a variation on the black, but it’s it’s um, also to explain the Brita, I probably have to go back a little bit. So I have what I call my incubator. And the, the incubator is where, um, I actually, I mod my own pedals just through experimentation sake just to mess around.
And then usually if I find a cool mod, I’ll offer that as a standalone pedal that people can get. Um, and, and in the process of doing a couple of different mods, uh, the brute was kind of born. So the brute is, is basically a, uh, um, a batch of one off modifications put into a production pedal. Um, so it’s, you can consider it to be a variation of the black, but it’s kind of, it’s kinda more than that, but I use, uh, BC one Oh eight transistors in there, so it sounds more vintage.
Um, it’s, uh, I reworked from control, so it’s, it’s a little bit darker. So the guys who to find the black to be too bright, which is usually a little, you know, like a lot of single coil players and stuff like that. I recommend the brute that, uh, it does, it does that, uh, It’s I would say it’s kind of has a fuzz face flavor, but without all of the weird idiosyncrasies, it doesn’t mind where it’s put in the chain.
You know, it doesn’t care if it has a buffer in front of it. In fact, it likes really hot pickups, that kind of thing. So it doesn’t have those same weaknesses. Um, and then from there as the white and the white is my boost and, um, it’s a J fat boost and it started life. Um, So back in the day, Jimmy page used an old Barkus Barry preempt called the 1550 S and it wasn’t really a stomp box.
It was like supposed to be on top your aunt. And, uh, and I had one, you know, back in the, in the eighties and it sounds great. It’s my favorite boost, but it’s really inconvenient cause there’s no foot switch and that kind of stuff. And so the, the why he was kind of my take on that, but it evolved from there.
I put the girth control on there. So it has the. The cap network, like the, like the, uh, the yellow does, but it also has an order switch. And what the order switch does is it allows you to have that girth control before the clipping diodes or after the clipping diodes. And so what that does is it makes it so that you can send more bass to the clipping diodes and that adds more compression and it changes the feel of it also makes it a lot more aggressive.
And so you can go from a, a semi clean boost. Change the order. And you now have a really dirty boost that really compliments, you know, cleaner apps and stuff like that. And so that’s, that’s the white and, and, and the circuit kind of evolve too. So it really doesn’t have anything, any, any relation to the Barker Sperry, 1550 S other than the fact that it also uses JFS.
So it kind of does its own thing as it kind of. You know, as I developed it. And then, uh, most recent is the red spiral and the red spiral drive channel. And that’s a collaboration with Christopher from shoe pedals. And, uh, uh, he and I worked on the, the DOD looking glass and the red spiral is kind of, uh, an evolution of that, uh, circuit as well.
Um, it has an extra gain stage. Um, it’s uh, it’s uh, but it’s, it’s, uh, It was really designed for guys who play clean apps, Christopher plays clean apps. So I, I, I play mostly dirty. Um, my mind clean is what most players would call their, uh, you know, rhythm or grit channel or, you know, grit tone. Um, Christopher plays a really spank and clean thing.
And so the red spiral is designed for those players, or you want to have a basically add an extra amp channel to your clean out. And so it gives you three toggles, selections of gain. Um, so you can use it as a boost or use it as a higher gain piece. But, uh, yeah, that was, that was, that also has the tone pyramid two.
Oh. And the tone permit is cool because it’s, so Christopher has been experimenting over the past few years with, uh, changing, um, how a Pennell interacts with your, uh, guitars pickups. Because of course, you know, when you change your, your impedance from the pickup to the. The panel, um, there’s a resonant peak, and it depends upon how long your cable is and that kind of stuff.
And so the tone pyramid actually has a peak control that allows you to change the resonant peak of your pickup when it’s attached to it. So the red spiral likes to be first in the chain, but those are that’s all the pedals I’ve got
Emily: [00:54:26] nice.
Andrew: [00:54:27] I play through a clean amp typically. So that’s a, that has my intrigue.
Emily: [00:54:36] Master
Andrew: [00:54:37] can master it. There we go. Uh, raver deluxe sitting over here. That’s been treat me really nicely last few months.
Tom Cram: [00:54:45] So fender amps are typically known for being a little mid scoop. Um, so the nice thing about the red spiral is you’re able to accentuate, you know, those mids with, by changing that resonant, peak and Slade, they marry really well with fender amps.
Andrew: [00:54:58] All right. I might have to, I have to get my hands on one of those. So,
Tom Cram: [00:55:04] yeah, it’s, it’s
Emily: [00:55:05] about things you need to get your feet on. Andrew. What are the things you need to get your feet on?
Andrew: [00:55:13] Get on my feet. That that is, that is quite the transition. All right.
Emily: [00:55:19] Sorry. I forgot. I just realized we forgot to do several weeks ago.
Andrew: [00:55:27] Now you’re going to make me feel embarrassed. My feet are so naked right now,
Emily: [00:55:31] but, um, we had a sponsor a few weeks ago. It was, um, society Sox. Andrew, can you put it on the camera? Take care of the packaging.
Andrew: [00:55:39] Sorry. I just ripped the top off.
Emily: [00:55:40] Hold socks with a social cause. So for every pair that one buys from society socks, they give away a pair to a homeless shelter.
Andrew: [00:55:50] Alright, you guys are you guys aren’t ready for this visual effects? Uh, practical effects. Ready?
Emily: [00:55:57] Nice. Uh,
Andrew: [00:56:02] I got two pairs, so it looks like I’ve got
Tom Cram: [00:56:06] orchids. Oh,
Emily: [00:56:08] that’s so appropriate for the Pacific Northwest.
Andrew: [00:56:10] Yes, Northwest. And then I’ve got this, this red very, uh, vibrant pattern here
Emily: [00:56:17] and it has a laser beam.
Andrew: [00:56:19] That seems appropriate and it also has orange in it. So I’ve
Tom Cram: [00:56:22] roof. Oh, there you go.
Emily: [00:56:25] Birthday, Andrew. Yeah.
Andrew: [00:56:30] How about early Christmas? Cause socks are a Christmas gift.
Tom Cram: [00:56:33] So, so do you see your socks?
Andrew: [00:56:37] Uh, I, I do cuff my pants. Usually because I’m short and buying pants with the appropriate length is difficult, but I do sometimes roll, not the extra layer up just to show off some socks.
Emily: [00:56:51] I don’t know if Tom is laughing. Cause I had mentioned pegging pants. I think Andrew you’re way too young for that.
Tom Cram: [00:56:59] That’s what we use
Andrew: [00:57:00] all the time. I might be. I might look very young
Tom Cram: [00:57:04] when our low top converse pegging our jeans. Then we’re on the half socks.
Emily: [00:57:12] Yeah. I like it. I like a pant that, uh, cups like tightly around the ankles.
Andrew: [00:57:20] Yeah. I remember I was in,
Tom Cram: [00:57:22] there was that period during the nineties when, when pants got all baggy. Um, and, uh, it was, it was a little sad, but like I liked the, I liked the clean, the clean
Emily: [00:57:33] look.
Andrew: [00:57:35] For sure. I remember I was in high school. It was like eighties week. And I was like, I’ve got to dress up, like, like it’s the eighties.
And I remember my parents, like trying to explain like what pegging was and uh, I remember I couldn’t get it to work quite right. So I tried to use the cheater method with a closed spin, and I remember stabbing my thumb and it was just a mess
Emily: [00:57:58] with a close
Andrew: [00:57:58] pen. Yeah. Yeah.
Emily: [00:58:00] Lots of feet, dude. I have. Are you thinking
Tom Cram: [00:58:04] I got start a safety pin.
Emily: [00:58:07] There we go. Get a splinter. How did you close?
Andrew: [00:58:13] Yeah, Tom, for, for reference, I’m a, I’m a child and turning 26 in a couple of weeks. Uh, so when you say that, you said you started in 95. I was born in the end of 94.
Tom Cram: [00:58:24] Oh,
you’re like a newborn.
Andrew: [00:58:31] I am.
Tom Cram: [00:58:31] Yeah.
Andrew: [00:58:34] I frequently get called all sorts of derogatory childlike terms on the show. That
Emily: [00:58:40] little buddy
Andrew: [00:58:41] buddy is one of them.
Emily: [00:58:44] Surely that was Emily has had maybe one too many gin and tonics had a hold steady show.
Andrew: [00:58:50] Yeah, that was, yeah, that was, that was at the show. I forgot like Klaus.
Emily: [00:58:54] I went to concerts once a month. Yeah,
Tom Cram: [00:58:56] I remember that. Ah, here we go actually before the, the, yeah. Yeah. So before the podcast started, Emily and I were talking about how COVID has changed everything, but that’s a huge change. No, it’s been so long since I’ve been to a live show. It’s been so long since I played a live show.
It’s it’s very frustrating
Emily: [00:59:18] live stream show, but it’s not the same. It’s not the same one. There’s not an audience there. Cause I can’t go into the audience and do my guitar solos. Like I usually do. It’s a
Tom Cram: [00:59:27] weird end, the songs too. Right? I mean you and your song and there’s silence. There’s no feedback, nothing at all.
Are you looking into a camera like we’re doing now and it’s yeah. You know, I’ve seen other artists do it to varying degrees of success, but there’s always that weird, uncomfortable, you know, 4.5 seconds between when the song ends and the next one starts or they say something, but
Emily: [00:59:49] yeah. It’s like an, I don’t know, what’s worse if there’s like complete silence or if like the crew goes, because like it, cause cause when the light goes, when the crew is like, Ooh, it sounds like you’re playing to a bar with three people.
And then that almost sounds sadder.
Tom Cram: [01:00:09] We have to figure out though, as, as artist, right. We have to figure out how we’re going to make that work. Cause right now it’s awkward.
Emily: [01:00:17] I made the joke. I made the joke that we should get on the ready, like on one of our phones, like sound of an audience clapping. And then when the song is over, just someone goes up to their microphone,
Andrew: [01:00:31] a drum trick, like a trigger attached to a drum machine. So I wait towards the end of the song your drummers do is fill. He just knocks it real quick to cue the track. And just as the is dying down, you hear it. Start to the audience, starts to get loud.
Emily: [01:00:44] Um,
Andrew: [01:00:45] and have it set
Tom Cram: [01:00:46] or have you have
Andrew: [01:00:48] it like,
Emily: [01:00:48] Oh, what’s the, we should do that.
Or get the sound guy to do it
Andrew: [01:00:53] Roland Octopod or something. So a song set, you got a different clap track for each song.
Tom Cram: [01:00:58] So one of the things that my man used, I used to have samples. Recorded on my jam, man. And so in between, you know, as we’re tuning and stuff on play samples and, you know, maybe it’s time to bring that kind of stuff back where you have the, some sort of transition from song to song.
So you’re not having that silence, or I guess you can just learn to embrace the silence and then be okay with it. But right
Emily: [01:01:19] now, yeah, when I do solo stuff, I’ll do like, I’ll, I’ll make a really quick little loop and then I’ll go in tune. Or I’ll get prepped for the next song. I get my loop, do that. Then I set my son.
Yeah. My guitar. And then I stopped live and play the next song, but I don’t know. Yeah. I seen Jeff’s a brotherhood, uh, when I saw them for the first time I Webster hall. No, it wasn’t, I don’t know. It wasn’t a Webster hall. It was a battery. And, um, they would do this play songs on their phone, between songs when they were tuning.
I was like, Oh,
Tom Cram: [01:01:55] sorry. Yeah. I mean our responsibility, right? As, as artists to figure out how to make that work,
Emily: [01:02:04] it are people on stage because normally I think that would be filled with banter, but when it’s just like two people or one person there’s no like between song banter. Nope.
Andrew: [01:02:12] I mean, there could be, it just depends on how crazy you want to seem in front of everybody.
Like, Hey Andrew, how was that show? I thought was pretty great. Drew. What about you?
Audience loves it. What audience
Emily: [01:02:30] is that a banter too? Like I’ve, I’ve had, I’ve had a friend who she would try to do banter between songs. Sometimes they would just be like so awkward. Like I, you know, I, sometimes not everything I say is appropriate. Like I like to make an appropriate joke sometimes, but maybe, maybe when you’re on stage to people who don’t know you and you’re a little foci.
You’re a little bulky person and you’re making. Maybe making Dick jokes. It’s not like
Tom Cram: [01:02:58] everyone loves
Emily: [01:02:59] me.
Tom Cram: [01:03:04] Yeah. I think it’s going to be,
Emily: [01:03:05] you’d be about to play like a song about like having sex and then she would be like, my dad hates the song and her dad’s like in the audience.
Tom Cram: [01:03:14] I think another interesting dynamic though, is when you’re at a live show and you, and you do banter, um, half the time, the audience can’t even hear what you’re saying.
It just turns into kind of Woah, but when you’re doing a, uh, you know, a live stream, they can hear every little sniff and snore and everything. So, you know, maybe it’s a chance for us to get really good at banter.
Emily: [01:03:34] Yeah. Maybe I think that the weirdest thing about onstage banter is that you can’t like sometimes the people on the stage can’t hear each other either.
Cause you’re like, well, I don’t have any of the guitars vocals and my mic. So I can’t hear when Emily makes a joke. Maybe Dan can’t the drummer can’t hear me at all. What’d you say? Yup. I can tell you
Tom Cram: [01:03:55] the audience is laughing. She said something funny.
Emily: [01:03:59] So I should laugh and then no, maybe not. Yeah. That’s another, that’s another weird one that people don’t understand.
Andrew: [01:04:06] You could just turn on all of your delays and reverbs do a really sick swell in between songs and then bring back your volume and just tune because
Tom Cram: [01:04:18] it’s swell.
Andrew: [01:04:19] Just let it build up. And as it starts to die out, KA count in for the next song. There’s an idea. I like that.
Emily: [01:04:26] No, I do that. Sometimes I actually do that with Sunday crush, sometimes going from one song into another, because I’m our first song we play as kiss to death as instrumental.
The second song is a bit of a rock song, but if there’s like a pause in between, it sounds weird. Cause on the record they kind of flow into each other. So I will hit just like the, the, um, infinite repeats on the delay of in foster Wallace, by bookworm or facts or something. And, uh, And then the drummer will do a crack and then the singer will start.
And so it was just, it flows. That’s, that’s, that’s my favorite way to make sure that flows well into, um, itself, because the timing is always a little bit different, especially now that we’re not as tightly rehearsed as we had been right. When COVID hit.
Andrew: [01:05:11] Yeah, I can see that. Just don’t do it. I, what my old band mate did, I, I was in the one show we played in that band.
Um, W we have three songs set for a battle of the bands and we are all rehearsed, all fired up at our drummer bailed on his last second. Uh, so we had to, like, we were playing along to drum tracks.
Emily: [01:05:32] Oh, we’ve done that. It’s really weird. It’s
Andrew: [01:05:34] awkward, super weird. And especially for a battle of the bands, like no one was into it and it wasn’t like a genre specific battle of the bands were like, we were like one of two rock bands.
And so we get through the second song, like going to the third song and the singer dish, like he’s upset because the audience is reacting. He’s like, I don’t know if you guys know, but you’re at a rock show up and I’m like, buddy, you can’t just yell at the audience like that. They don’t know.
Tom Cram: [01:06:02] Can we just lose?
Cool.
Andrew: [01:06:09] No. It’s never a good look. I was so embarrassed and that’s clearly why I screwed up the guitar solo on the last song. What we’ll go with
Tom Cram: [01:06:20] that now with our live streaming and COVID gigs, you can, you can break the audience all you want, but you know, y’all them to get out there and start marching.
Things like that
Andrew: [01:06:34] right now
Emily: [01:06:41] plays a song called I can’t stand up for falling down. And one time, I guess he was really mad at the audience. So he started saying you can’t stand up for sitting down cause they were all sitting. It didn’t go over well.
Andrew: [01:06:53] Yeah.
Emily: [01:06:55] I don’t think it improved anything. I think that you can like encourage people to get that’s what I do when I go into the crowd for my solos, it’s usually to like, pretend to like lasso people.
If I really long cable and like pull the men, like nudge them closer to the stage, it usually works. Actually. It’s like, they feel shame and that Jenna does that for a song. And then I do it again, like get out of there.
Andrew: [01:07:19] Thank you.
Emily: [01:07:21] I can’t respond well enough to that.
Andrew: [01:07:25] Tom before, before we wrap things. Oh, we’ve got so many good ideas on this episode.
Um, so before we, we, we say, uh, end of episode, while we’ve got you here. Uh, one of my favorite things in the last few months, uh, in Kobe, just kind of scrolling through my newsfeed. What do you’ve got stories about what it was like working at DOD and whatnot, and. And Digitech is sharing some of those. And you share those in, uh, one of the, the duty appreciation groups
Tom Cram: [01:07:58] society on Facebook.
Yep. Yep. So there’s that? And, uh, one of them is, is the fan, the fan VOD fan club. Um, which has less members and less action, but the one that sees the most action is the appreciation society. And that was pretty fun. It’s not just me either. There’s, there’s like four other guys that are exited the tech and DOD that, that talk about stuff to, uh, you know, Rick CRI Phil John Hanson.
Mmm. I can’t think of who else, but, but yeah, but it’s, it’s, it’s a fun group. It’s cool because no, the guys who are big fans of the Jason Lam era stuff too. So it’s not just me talking about my craft, you know, it’s other guys talking about, you know, different errors and stuff and they’re, you know, various fans of, uh, the, the multi effects and stuff like that.
So it’s a pretty wide ranging
Andrew: [01:08:47] group.
I’ve been really enjoying it. And I guess I’m going to put you on the spot if you don’t mind. And I do have this story.
Tom Cram: [01:08:58] So some,
Andrew: [01:08:59] a story that you’d like to share that might be a little off the wall or something that we would love to hear as like an inside track of what things were like a little bit. If I had this algebra
Emily: [01:09:09] linear.
Tom Cram: [01:09:10] Oh boy. So you’re kind of, you are putting me on the spot. There’s there’s there’s a lot, um, The, um, I guess the there’s nothing in specific when I guess the weirdest thing is, is when you’re working for a huge corporation, like Harmon. So, so a lot of what I, okay. So what a lot of people don’t realize is that Harmon, isn’t just Harmon, uh, pro so DBX, Digitech, VOD, VSS, you know, all those audio companies.
Or only a really small part of what Hartman was. So Harman international was actually a way bigger company. They had an automotive division and they had, you know, an installed division for installed sound, that kind of thing. And so we were very small. So working for a little company that makes pedals inside this giant organization was, was quite a challenge.
And everything we did was pretty much a battle because the other, the other divisions. Didn’t understand what we were doing and had no conception. So we were like this little rock and roll company stuck inside this, this giant really, um, kind of straight lace of, you know, international company. So it was, it was a very strange dynamic on, on, on one hand it was freeing because we could do stuff very, very quickly without, you know, uh, much impediment because people didn’t know what the heck we are doing.
But this, this, I used to call it the ISR on, but as soon as somebody from another division, you know, zeroed in on us, you know, then all of a sudden all these different layers would suddenly appear and all that kind of stuff. So it was, it was a Oh very educational, but yet frustrating experience. But when we got a lot done, though, it was cool.
Um, I’m guessing it doesn’t isn’t as salacious as you were looking for, but some of the more salacious things I probably can’t talk about.
Andrew: [01:11:10] No, I think that’s really interesting perspective to, to bring into things. Um, I mean, I, I have a corporate day job and I resonate with that a little bit and I can definitely, I can kind of feel like I could put myself in that place for a moment and kind of imagine what it was like. For sure.
Tom Cram: [01:11:28] Yeah. Some of the funnier things would be, you know, we, we had to get towards the end of the project and, um, it was, it was the names, some of the names of the cuddles, you know, when I came up with the, you know, Polera obscure and that kind of stuff, as soon as corporate would get window, they’d be like, what does this mean?
Exactly. And so I’d have to do like a, a meeting with these people about the name of a pedal, because they were worried that it meant something. You know, one of the questions I got was is this something from urban dictionary that we should be worried about? I’m like, no, we didn’t use them.
Emily: [01:12:09] Are there any in particular that they were like concerned with?
Tom Cram: [01:12:12] Um, yeah. Um, let’s see. So, so the, the, the mosaic that’s, this is a good example. So the mosaic, when it came out. Um, w was first going to be called the Zodiac. And, um, if you look the mosaic, it has, it has like the, the astrology symbol and that kind of stuff.
And so they saw the astrology symbol and the Zodiac, and they were kind of freaked out. They’re like, what does this mean? And, and, you know, when, when you get into kind of the, or, uh, uh, spooky and esoteric stuff, I mean, the astrology in the Zodiac is like the most inoffensive, you know, entryway into that kind of stuff.
So I didn’t even see how that could be an issue. But they had a problem with it. Um, uh, I ended up changing the name, but it wasn’t because of that. And it changed the name because our legal department, uh, was, was worried that they couldn’t trademark Zodiac. And so I named it mosaic consent. So there, there, there were some names to
Emily: [01:13:10] name.
Tom Cram: [01:13:11] Oh, thanks. Thanks. Yeah, I think it would have been cooler as the Zodiac, but you know, what are you going to do? I mean, 12, you know, 12 strings emulator. So we have the 12 signs in the Zodiac. It kind of all fit together. But I have a running list of pedal names that I’ve been keeping for years. And, uh, and so every once in a while, you know, I, I quit when I was a dirty robot.
That was when they had a problem with they, they were, they were convinced that that was a, uh, an urban dictionary reference. So I’m like, no, man, it’s, it’s a real thing. It’s a, it’s a date.
So yeah.
Emily: [01:13:51] It’s got dirty right in the name. Tom. You’re not pulling anything over on anybody. It’s just brazenly this dirty
Tom Cram: [01:13:57] and inducted now. And now it makes you wonder if I should go into urban dictionary and find out if dirty robot actually means something other than what I think it means
Emily: [01:14:09] a dirty robe
Andrew: [01:14:13] that
Emily: [01:14:15] I might not even. Oh, I just get to shrug emoji, no dirty robot. It’s filthy dubstep as some definitely gross stuff in here, but Jesus.
Sexy robots on there. That’s actually one of the Tamer ones that I could read out loud.
Andrew: [01:14:43] Yeah. That’s always the stuff you’re like, there’s no way that could be misconstrued is incredibly offensive. Oh my,
Tom Cram: [01:14:51] actually it’s funny. Speaking of, you know, trying to find something on urban dictionary, one of the things, my favorite things I’ve been doing lately is I’ll, I’ll invent a fake band name.
I’m like, Mmm. No, uh, uh, swamp lights or something like that, then I’ll go on band camp and do a search because someone somewhere has that name. And I’ve actually found some of the coolest fricking bands that way, just inventing your band name and then seeing if it actually exists. And they do. There’s a lot of cool bands out there.
Little randomized search
Emily: [01:15:24] to see if crucial haircut actually exists.
Andrew: [01:15:27] I bet you I’ve done that before as well. I remember I had this idea of my brand. Like it would be six, it’d be in a band called the bipolar bears. And I looked at, be like, it’s taken.
Tom Cram: [01:15:44] It was like one of those
Andrew: [01:15:44] late night, college nights where I was. A little intoxicated Chang with friends. I’m like, I’ve got it.
Tom Cram: [01:15:51] That’s actually a cool name. My polar bears. I’m not surprised it’s taken though. That’s a, that’s a good play on words.
Andrew: [01:15:59] I’m a fan of Pines.
Emily: [01:16:02] Uh, I think that we’ve been going for just over an hour.
Um, probably a good time to wrap it up. Uh, Tom, where can, where can the internet find you?
Tom Cram: [01:16:09] Uh, you can go to my website, which is a simple. W w dot spiral electric FX, separate letters, F an x.com. Um, um, Facebook just type in Spire electric effects. And you’ll find me, Instagram is the same thing, but, um, you know, I try to keep pretty up to date on, on both Facebook and Instagram, uh, posting stuff where, you know, you’ll, you’ll be able to see me actually in the middle of a build and I’ll post pics of that.
And any latest experiments I’m working on. So it’s. It’s pretty, pretty casual, pretty fun. It’s a nice change from, from, and to be able to do my own thing and be able to let people in a little bit more intimately, I guess. So, yeah, I’m all over the place on the web. Then join. If you’re a DOD fan joined the DOD appreciation society.
It’s fun. Um, Even if you’re not a fan, uh, join, cause you might end up being a fan. Cause there’s I know a lot of guys out there that aren’t of DOD, but uh, sometimes you get converted.
Andrew: [01:17:18] Uh, and, and if you like, if you like DOD pedals and you have to have a volume or expression pedal,
I think I brought this with me to Nam, uh, the expression show
Tom Cram: [01:17:30] on the jazz, the jazz cup,
Emily: [01:17:35] they call it snazzy
Andrew: [01:17:40] and it goes in the dark.
Tom Cram: [01:17:43] I did a super
Andrew: [01:17:44] cool shameless plug over.
Tom Cram: [01:17:46] Do you have you have those available for sale? Can I get one?
Emily: [01:17:52] I didn’t hear that. Okay.
Andrew: [01:17:54] I’ll send you, I will send you one. I’ve got you all one or two.
Tom Cram: [01:17:59] Oh, dude. Send me too, because I have both the expression
that is so cool.
Emily: [01:18:07] Nice. That’s a popular one.
Tom Cram: [01:18:12] I saw, I saw a picture online of a guy who had that, that, uh, jazz pattern tattooed on his arm. Um, well funny, that’s something to be saddled with,
Emily: [01:18:22] right?
Tom Cram: [01:18:26] Yes.
Emily: [01:18:27] They say with
Andrew: [01:18:28] going in and I’ll blow up with your name on it and going out in the mail tomorrow,
Tom Cram: [01:18:32] I’ll send you an address.
Andrew: [01:18:33] Send me your address after the show.
Emily: [01:18:35] No, just read it, read it out loud right now.
Andrew: [01:18:39] Yeah, I got it. Got a million head right here and I got a panel.
Emily: [01:18:48] Don’t make me edit.
Oh, God. Well to everyone out there. Thanks so much for, for tuning in via watching or listening, please consider supporting us on Patrion at patrion.com/get offset. We also have merged it. Get all set podcast.com/shop, or if you don’t want to spend any money, but you would like to support the show. You can do that by leaving a rating and review on iTunes, it really does help us in the charts to get new listeners at cetera.
Um, but I, yeah, I don’t know if I should say thanks for watching or thanks for listening now. Cause on the demos I say thanks for watching on the podcast. I say thanks for listening. And they had slipped. Let me look at the numbers. I think they had kind of similar, similar listen. Well actually, no. Oh, wow.
That’s actually really close.
Andrew: [01:19:44] How about, thank you for listening cause no one wants to wash my face and you say thank you for
Emily: [01:19:50] watching. Thanks for watching. Thanks for understanding.
Andrew: [01:19:54] Thanks for listening. Thanks for understanding
Emily: [01:19:56] until next time. My name is Emily.
Andrew: [01:19:58] My name is Andrew
Tom Cram: [01:19:59] and I’m Tom.
Emily: [01:20:00] That’s Tom.