Brothers AM

A collaboration with Analog Man

written by Joel Korte

I’m feeling a lot of relief right now.

I wanted this to happen so badly.

We made a pedal with Analog Man.

Brothers AM is a tribute to the King of Tone overdrive. We worked closely with Mike to create an expanded take on the King of Tone that lets you explore that coveted circuit in brand new ways.

It has an all-analog signal path, a bunch of bonuses (including a Beano-inspired treble booster), and all the handy digital control you expect from our pedals (presets!).

But as I sit down to write this, I find myself really wanting to fixate on the human side of this story. Our product page will tell you about the pedal.

We did also make a whopper of a mini-doc, but there’s a bit more I want to say.

Something small happened the first time we visited Analog Man in Connecticut, but it really stood out to me:

We all bought a pedal.

Me, Zack, Knobs, Joe – all of us. (I also bought an old Blues Breaker that got me pulled over by security on the flight home).

I can’t remember exactly when I first came across Analog Man, but I know that I was digging around in some old internet forum in the 2000’s. The mood was always just different when Analog Man came up, whether it was the King of Tone, or the Sun Face, or the Beano Boost. There was this consensus: That’s the best one.

Since then, Analog Man has always occupied this special tier in my mind – a rare mix of experience, and reputation, and a bit of mystery. What I realized while being there in his shop is that we all felt that way. We all had our own version of that memory and we all wanted to take a piece of that history home.

That’s the gravity of Analog Man.

And if you meet Mike Piera, it all makes sense.

The first time I met Mike, all I could think about were the reasons this project wouldn’t work out:

Mike wouldn’t like the prototype, or he would be protective of the King of Tone, or we wouldn’t click. It may sound a bit weird but all of that made more sense to me than what actually happened.

Instead, Mike was the most relaxed, generous, and sincere partner imaginable, and this project could not have felt more natural. 24:04 of the mini-doc sums up his approach better than I can here.

After spending some time with Mike and touring around Analog Man HQ, the project clarified immediately. There’s no way to truly replicate Mike’s process, everything is simply too personal and hand-crafted (and made with finite, vintage NOS components). So we decided to focus on the aspects of the King of Tone that we could expand and take further. Instead of labouring over a perfect recreation, we decided to make an expanded counterpart.

But we got far, far closer than any of us thought possible. If you check out 22:15 in the mini-doc, you will see our genuine reaction when we A/B the final prototype.

So that’s why I’m relieved.

And I know this is laying it on too thick but I’m going to say it: The King of Tone is the real deal. It won us all over. It’s effortless to use, it always sounds right, and I can’t remember the last time I played the guitar this much.

I’m proud of the work we did with Brothers AM to capture that energy in a new way.

Order are open now, the pedal is in stock, and we’re shipping in order received.

In terms of shipping timelines, we’ll be updating the product page as things develop. The page says 1-2 weeks, but the earliest orders will start shipping today.

Thanks for reading, and thanks for your support.