3/6 - Hartman interview in Premier Guitar Magazine
2/20 - A brief chronology of the Orange Squeezer.
2/19 - Premier Guitar's Brett Petrusek interviews Steve Stevens on the new album, his gear, including the Hartman pedals he used during recording, and about upcoming studio work and tour with Billy Idol.  March 2008 web exclusive.
2/18 - New  www.myspace.com/hartmanelectronics.  Come by.
2/12 - Hartman Vintage Germanium Boost is now available using NOS Mullard UK OC71 black-glass Germanium transistors, and NOS Mullard UK OC76.  Slightly smoother sounding upper-harmonics than OC44.  OC71 were used in some original production Rangemasters.

12/1/07- Finishing touches on a clone of a bucket-brigade era (non-deluxe) EH Electric Mistress Flanger for a client this month.  

11/9/07 - CAD drawings for Graphtec molds of Roland Hannes' new hard-tail bridge design.  I first played one of Roland's prototypes at winter NAMM in 2006.  Its resonance transfer is incredible.   Unlike anything I've heard before.  Precise, easily accessed controls for compensation and adjustment.  If you're a guitar tech, the dark ages are over.  Congratulations to Roland on the launch of his new bridge.  Manufactured and distributed by Schaller.

11/6/07 - Very honored to be sending a couple of pedals to Pete Townsend this month.  

8/10/07- LM308 Op-Amp Distortion now available for sale via the website.

8/7/07 - Here is a peek at the new pedal coming out this week.  It is based on the circuit architecture of the early ProCo Rat and features on-the-fly footswitching between 2 different distortion types:

6/28/07- The site was down yesterday, ISP 'upgrades'.  Everything should be functioning normally again, please shoot me an email if you have any trouble with the shopping cart or links.

I'm doing a limited run of Germanium Treble Boosters based on the original Dallas Rangemaster.  I'm going to offer the pedal with the NOS Newmarket UK NKT-275, and while the supply lasts, black-glass OC44s from Mullard, UK and Phillips (Netherlands, 1950s prod.).  I also have a few black-glass OC45 (=OC44 at audio freq.) for the curious.  These begin shipping mid-July and will probably number no more than 30-40 units before the black-glass stock is exhausted.  The Mullards are just fantastic, exceptionally transparent in their linear/clean region and sweet, subtle compression giving way to Germanium crunch at higher settings.  Great on tube amps with grid-leak bias.  The Mullard and Phillips OC44 are also some of the lowest leakage NOS Ge I've come across, which is a good thing in a treble booster, because leakage essentially = hiss, and if you're boosting everything as much as 24dB in the upper register, well, you get the idea.  I do have Texas Instruments OC44 in stock but I'm not offering them in the pedal at this time, they're great sounding in the clean region but they sound a bit stale when they clip compared to the Mullard and the Phillips.

6/15/07- About a year ago I was helping my friend and mentor, Stephen White of Guitar Tech in Berkeley remodel his shop when we came across some odd gems tucked away in the stock: an original Dan Armstrong Orange Squeezer, a 70s crybaby (bad wiper), and some beautiful wood for fan-fret instruments Stephen had inherited from his one-time mentor, Ralph Novak.

The Orange Squeezer found its way onto my bench and if it hadn't been for the fact that I couldn't satisfactorily clone it with the various JRC- and NJR-4558x chips I keep around for upgrading people's Tube Screamers, I probably wouldn't have embarked on the search for the mysterious little metal can inside Armstrong's circuit.  But I couldn't, so I did, and it took a while, but what you see on the left above, is the Raytheon, US RC4558T.  Too bad they didn't give it eyes.

The other little beauty (top, right) took about as long to track down in significant quantities, though you see small batches go by on Ebay all the time:  the LM308AH--the heart of the early RAT.  I love the RAT, always have, and again, I probably wouldn't even have looked for an old-stock part (there are plenty of more recently manufactured LM308Ns floating around) if I hadn't accidentally discovered something about the RAT while modding them on the bench:

One of the most common mods performed on a RAT is to alter its diode-clipping stage to change the character of its distortion.  Any number of variations exist involving Germanium diodes, Silicon diodes, LEDs, trimpots for asymmetry, etc.  All well and good, but what happens if you just omit the diode clipping stage and take the output off the op-amp?  Clean boost right?  Wrong.  There is op-amp distortion, and not just a little either.  The RAT in question had an LM308N in it.  It wasn't the worst-sounding distortion in the world, but it wasn't ready for daylight.  Curiousity prevailed.  I got a few of the older -AH style chips and suffice it to say it was off to the races.

Even running clean an op-amp will impart its sonic signature to a signal.  In many if not most cases, hopefully, it's a subtle enough thing that comparing the differences between the chips falls into the realm of what's considered by some to be 'cork-sniffing'. [I'm not saying different chips don't sound different; I'm just saying that if you're not using the effect in a context where the difference is AUDIBLE, it's...well...you get the idea].  

With an op-amp driven into clipping, however, subtle differences become magnified, and otherwise invisible aspects of a chip's performance, such as its slew rate (as has been proposed by others), and the manner in which it recovers from clipping, begin to dominate the character of the sound.  It turns out the RAT's not just in the diodes, so to speak. 

So what do these two B-movie flying saucer stand-ins have in common?  8-legs, round heads, a year to track down, and that you'll be seeing them both soon in pedals from Hartman Electronics. 

Why?  Because finding NOS Ge isn't hard enough.

Thanks for stopping by, more soon. -t

6/7/07- I received the following email today:

I was really interested in your fuzz face pedal until I read the profanity in your ad. I had read the reviews and the details of how your pedal is constructed and thought I might really prefer your pedal over the other builders such as [deleted], but I think I'll pass now. I find your ad vulgar and would just rather not do business with you for that reason. I hope you'll take this in the way it's intended - as a genuine constructive comment. You have an outstanding website and what appears to be a good product. Why mess it up with unprofessional, vulgar, pointless, offensive language? I think you've gone way past "blah blah blah" into "bleep bleep bleep". Clean up your act and I might consider you at a later time. Regards, Disappointed Potential Customer. 

Unfortunately DPC did not leave me a way to respond directly, so I will do so here: 

Dear DPC,

Your comment is apt.  Thank you for taking the time to share it.  I hope you find the revised content more enjoyable. -t

5/27/07- Happy Memorial Day everyone. My sincere thanks and appreciation to my customers who have made the past year one of the most memorable, enjoyable and admittedly exhausting of my life. I truly enjoy the contact and collaboration building and customizing fuzz entails. All you guys out there worried about being too high maintenance--you are, but bring it on.

On another note, Steve Stevens (Billy Idol, Bozzio Levin Stevens, Michael Jackson, Matrix Reloaded) picked up the NKT275 Germanium Fuzz last month. Steve is working on a new solo album on the Magna Carta label this summer that he describes in his own words on his website (April 2007 news update). He had this to say about the NKT275: "This is one fantastic pedal. Amazingly musical and exactly what I could only hope for it to be. Thanks so much for getting it out to me quickly."  Steve, glad you've enjoyed!  Thanks for letting me share your comments. -t