Based in Manchester, UK, is Owen Electronics, builders of some fine handmade pedals such as the Space Charge Distortion and the Bass Gremlin. Both of which are reviewed on this site.

I spoke to Martin Owen and asked him about the history, present and future of Owen Electronics.

Martin: Here is just a brief history of how I got involved in designing effects pedals. It started when I got my first electronics set for Xmas when I was about 9 years old. I now have over 30 years experience in electronics, doing various jobs from designing test equipment to repairing studio-mixing consoles. I purchased an analogue synthesizer kit many years and went through a Keith Emerson stage playing with a guitarist, sadly my keyboard skills were lacking and the guitarist suggested I take up bass guitar, which I did and became quite proficient. I decided to modify my synth to accept the output of my bass guitar and much to the guitarists disgust, it sounded like Hawkwind had landed in the bedrooom!

So, fed-up with sounding like Lemmy, I decided to try and find a pedal that would give me an overdriven sound and not annoy the neighbours. I purchased a few manufacturers pedals but always found them too overblown and very compressed, destroying the body of the bass sound so I decided to design my own bass overdrive pedal using an analogue signal processing technique instead of just overdriving an amplifier. After many prototypes, the Bass Gremlin was born which incidentaly the name was influenced by the Gremlin Song on the Hawkwind LP Captain Lockeed and the Starfighters!

I used the pedal extensively until taking along to a Rosetti/Gibson promotion at a local music store and letting the session bass player have a go. He was very impressed and suggested I market it and gave me some contacts, so I sent the pedal to Bassist magazine who published an excellent review.

Initially, I was only going to manufacture bass effects but decided to make guitar effects as well so I designed the Space Charge Distortion which uses a 12AX7 tube, this pedal has now received some excellent reviews in various UK guitar magazines including Guitar Buyer, Total Guitar and Guitarist.

We are due to release a new guitar overdrive pedal that has some unique features and then we will be looking at producing another bass pedal.