The Guitar Poppa project was born in the 2000s, in a motivating musical actuality: the return of guitars, the rediscovery of vintage gear once again perked up my ears. Nowadays, this agitation has subsided, but I keep enjoying a culture, and the experience of quality gear that is now affordable.
I collected historical diagrams and reactivated my technical courses. I gathered a treasure of components: Retrospective thanks to Philips-Mullard, Thomson, SGS-ATES, Siemens, these manufacturers who made good and over the long term… Also to the Red Army for its stocks of components on military standards and to their Ebay sellers!
And above all: I built lots of prototypes, tested at length on the workbench and on stage.
Here’s now GuitarPoppa.com website, opened in the spring of 2015 … I hope you will find there cool stuffs at the crossroads of vintage feeling and contemporary tools. It will be articles, schematics, and original products for sale.
Here is the GuitarPoppa.com website…
A commercial AND humanist site,
run by a musician for musicians…
With technical expertise cultivated in the field since the sixties.
Guitar Poppa with musicians trying out The [S]cream at the Bulle de Son studio in Lyon.
Guitar Poppa
is not another cloner
The aim of vintage is not antiquity for antiquity… Nor the blind copy of schematics which were often already questionnable in their time. I’ve been testing them as prototype and through computer simulation… I tried to understand what happens at the same time in the circuit AND under the guitarist’s finger…
Vintage and contemporary components in Poppa”s stompboxes.
Vintage culture, and contemporary reality
The heart of my project comes from the long history of guitar effects, but I didn’t stop there. Vintage circuits are usually musical because they are simple and often clever. But they are also dependent on the technological limits of their time, limited by superficial calculations, and by an often botched or stingy development.
My productions always include the auxiliary circuits, the internal adjustments which make it possible to get all the potential of the traditional assemblies.
The components are vintage when it is positively audible (transistors and diodes, some capacitors or some resistors in some places). They are contemporary when current technology guarantees reliability, low noise, resistance over time or temperature – and price.
Individualized design
My products are often available with options and sound variations that will let everyone please their needs. After receipt of the order with its options, each pedal is mounted by hand, and individually tuned to give it its full identity.
This is the artisan spirit:
Direct contact lets the customer specify his wishes, and lets the craftsman create an individualized product!
last edit : 2021, 08
