Brian Wilde
Keisman Pedals
Boone, NC
keismanpedals.com
Instagram: @keismanpedals
Facebook: keismanpedals
How long have you been a musician? How did you get into it in the first place?
I picked up the guitar around the age of 12 or 13. Listened to a lot of pop-punk at the time so the power chords and teen angst got me hooked.
Who have been some of your major musical influences, past or present?
In my guitar playing I’d have to say J Mascis from Dinosaur Jr has been one of the biggest. Really though, anything from the late 80s and 90s like My Bloody Valentine, Sonic Youth, Lemonheads, and all really has put a flavor on my guitar playing and songwriting. I try to be open minded about my guitar playing though and learn different styles so I’m not so one dimensional.
What led to the start of Keisman Pedals? How long have you been in business? How big is your operation/how many employees do you have?
Keisman Pedals actually was owned by another guy here in NC for about six months or so and he just gave up on it to start a church after that short time. My brother-in-law and I purchased it from him for basically the cost of the parts and just really revamped everything. It wasn’t too hot when we picked it up, haha.
We both have a history of doing DIY pedal/guitar projects and just trying to do stuff on our own, so we luckily had some experience going into it. I’ve built pedals in the past for personal use and my brother-in-law actually ran a pickup company for a while before.
We’ve been around since 2012 and at the moment, it’s just me running everything here at Keisman. I do bring in part-time employees when things pick up to stay on top of orders, but I primarily try to do it all on my own.
What drives you as far as new pedal creation is concerned? How long does it typically take for an idea to come full circle and become a demo pedal? What’s the process behind new gear, and the eventual release of it to the public?
I’m not one to try and follow trends and all too closely. I really try to just make the pedals that I enjoy playing myself. I’ve got a couple of fuzz pedals coming out this year, some tap tempos and other aux stuff coming real soon, and up after that I’m hoping to get an analog delay rolled out.
Depending on the R&D that goes into a new pedal, it can take a year or it can just take that short amount of time to have enclosures powder coated, screen printed, and built up. The analog delay will be the biggest thing I’ve tackled yet and I’m just started to prototype and see where it takes me. The tap tempos coming out for example are much quicker to drum up, just a couple weeks until they’re ready to release after coming up with the plan.
Overall, the process for me is a lot more trial by fire as I do not have formal training in engineering. Get an idea, bread board it and play it for a while to make sure it’s exactly how I want. Then we have the PCBs made, drilling layouts done, artwork, and it’s essentially ready for release. That’s the short version. Then we’ve got to market it, film demos, get the info out to dealers, and all that.
I don’t care if you’ve got degrees and 20 years of experience engineering, if you don’t have an ear for music and what something should sound like, then you’re basically at the same level I am. Put all the bells and whistles on something that you want, if it doesn’t sound good, it’s not going to sell. I prefer simple and great sounding at any setting and that’s really what I go for with every pedal.
What are some of the biggest concerns facing your profession today?
I think the biggest threat to the pedal industry or maybe even the gear industry as a whole is just the amount of builders out there today. The pedal industry has become very saturated in the past few years, especially with all the information available just by using Google. Anybody can start a company and the cool factor of building pedals tends to attract a lot of people (by the way, it isn’t very glamorous if you’re wondering). Customers have an endless amount of choices, so standing out in that is a tough one at times. It also leaves a little less pie to go around for all the builders. Can’t complain though because that’s Keisman, it’s that company that came in right as it started to explode but we’ve managed to poke our head up and get some recognition.
Where do you see pedal building going in the future?
In really any industry there tends to be a cycle it seems. Every ten or fifteen years history tends to repeat it’s self. Same clothes, same music, same gear, and so on. You can see right now that people’s rigs have a lot more multi-fx units than they did a few years ago. There’s more amp modeling now over tube amps. So, really whatever happened ten or fifteen years ago, you can probably expect that to be coming up next.
Who are some of your favorite builders in the industry right now?
Tim at Tym Guitars
Philippe at Caroline Guitar Company
Kyle at Blackout Effectors
Just to name a few. I have a lot of respect for a lot of the builders in the industry, it’d be impossible to name them all.
Name the last 5 records you listened to:
1. Dan Mason – Miami Virtual
2. The Surfites – Big Pounder
3. Crash Test Dummies – God Shuffled His Feet
4. Man or Astro Man? – Defcon
5. Dinosaur Jr – Beyond
Klon hype: Love it or Hate it?
The Klon is a decent overdrive. I like it. I even released a limited run of a Klone. However, I do think they’re way over hyped.
Even though Bill won’t admit it, I’d say the hype was completely self created by him. It may be intentional or it may not be, but still completely in his hands. When you have high demand for a product and you don’t release anything to quench that demand, act all mysterious and tease details about an eventual re-release hype will certainly build up. Bill finally released a couple of much larger batches of KTRs and then what happened? The used resale value of KTRs dropped from $400-$500 to a much more reasonable price and people can actually buy new ones from retailers still today. The market for Klones has completely plummeted as well.
Can’t really hate on him for it though, I think any of us running pedal companies would have loved to be in that position. A lot of us probably would have gone about it a different way though.
Any last comments, or anything you’d like to talk about?
Nope! Thanks for the questions!
Thanks so much to Brian for taking the time to answer some questions!
Make sure to go check out keismanpedals.com, cheers!
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