About Dazatronyx

Quality

The effects market gets bigger every day. Companies overseas are able to mass produce cheap gear. Amateur D.I.Y. effects hobbyists are trying to get their foot in the door from every direction to make a dollar. Because of this I do not offer simple clones and modified reproductions like so many other 'boutique' builders. I honestly believe that my circuits have been engineered to offer something truly unique.

I still utilize many construction and design methods from the past where I believe that they were simply better, such as true bypass switching to preserve your unaffected tone. If you open any of my products you will find the quality of construction that you would expect to find in a well made vintage amplifier. That being said, I design, make and assemble all of my circuit boards in-house. Too many 'hand made' pedals that I see now have outsourced boards connected with ribbon cables and as many shortcuts as possible. Where has the love gone?

I like to think of my designs as being hybrids, with components and techniques similar to the past, but with modern adaptions.

Every pedal is hand made - as such no two are completely alike and you may expect to find small imperfections here and there. I consider each my own piece of art and endeavour that you pay for something special that stands out above all others. There are no slide-on decals, no home printer iron-on transfers, and no hobby spray painting.

History

Dazatronyx was created by myself, Darron Thornbury. Interested in technology and handy with a soldering iron, I accidentally slipped into reading on the net and modifying my gear. This lead me to discover that there is a whole small world revolving around this fascination of guitar pedals. There are a lot of high end modifications and pedals completely build by hand which are higher regarded than any expensive commercial ones.

This made me ask "why do commercially built pedals not have these customisation and modifications stock?" I quickly discovered the simple answer - it's not commercially viable! Some of these boutique quality parts are damned expensive to include in pedals. They can be bulky and take up lots of labour to include. Companies don't want to use components that cost 300% more and sound 2% better. They don't want to use mechanical switches which need to be hand-wired and have higher failure rates than cheap electronic switching, and they certainly don't want to use old technologies such as germanium transistors and light-sensitive resistors which need to be hand-selected and calibrated. Too many headaches when you can do things quickly and cheaply and get 'the same sort of thing'.

I decided that the only way to have my pedals exactly the way that I thought they should be would be to build them myself. At the time my studies gave me the opportunity to make printed circuit boards, so I took advantage of this and learnt how to construct my own pedals.

After making working messes of wires, I realised that a fully working pedal was less than half way there. It had to look good! It had to have a durable finish. It had to be reliable. Stubbornly I went through all the different processes that I could think of. Silk screening, acid etching, CNC routing, UV light box exposures, mirror polishing, powder coating, anodizing, laser engraving, laser decals, stenciling, and using every kind of paint possible along the way. Batch after batch after batch of pedals that I was 90% happy with. All 'okay' but just not IT. This is what lead to my pedals finally being finished the way that they are today.

Building new pedals for myself and artist friends has now lead a selection of designs being offered to the world.

Dazatronyx is based in Melbourne, Australia.

Components

Absolutely no compromises are made in the production of my pedals. In each you can expect to find:

• 3PDT foot switch for true bypass + LED.
• All analogue circuitry.
• Switchcraft audio sockets.
• Alpha potentiometers.
• 600V tin-plated copper teflon wiring.
• Extra thick Hammond/Eddystone aluminium enclosure.
• ±1% Tolerance metal film resistors.
• ±1% Polypropylene / ±5% Metal film Capacitors where possible, low ESR where electrolytic.
• Powder coated finish for extra durability.
• In-house made tin plated copper circuit board.
• Lead-free solder.

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© Darron Thornbury