My Name is Colin Croy, I am the Owner and Engineer at CroyTone Audio Effects Pedals based out of St Louis, MO. Our website is www.CroyToneAudio.com
How long have you been a musician? How did you get into it in the first place?
I’ve been a musician for about 15 years. My dad was a jazz guitarist and my family and family friends were largely musical so there was always music being played around me. I initially started out playing bass but that didn’t last too long because I had my cheap bass but had access to all of my dads great guitars so I made the switch fairly quickly.
Who have been some of your major musical influences, past or present?
I grew up listening to a pretty wide variety of stuff. Initially it was Jerry Garcia, Lowell George, George Harrison, etc. Getting older, my tastes expanded to people like Lee Ronaldo, J Mascis, Electric Neil Young and more out there stuff. Jazz was also a huge influence through my dad but everything from old time Ozark acoustic music to Pavement and Sonic Youth makes it into my playing these days. Nels Cline has been a major favorite and hero of mine for a few years now.
What led to the start of CroyTone Audio? How long have you been in business?
I started CroyTone Audio after I started really making pedals of my own design for touring musicians. I have been tinkering with and building pedals since I was in high school, but I was really starting to branch out into my own ideas. I started to get pedals into the hands of people who were taking them on the road and telling me how much they loved them. After doing that for awhile, I bit the bullet and made it official in 2015.
As of now, I am the only employee of the company, I design, prototype, hand build and market all of the pedals. I do leave the design work to my friend Beau Shoulders of New Scar design and Im starting to get other people involved who are better at a specific aspect than I am. I was working out of my house for the longest time, but I moved up to a separate space about 7 months ago in South City Ct Louis.
Did you have formal schooling, or are you self-taught? Take us through that story:
My dad taught me the basics of wiring and soldering when I was a kid but I got a lot of my more intensive and formal education in the Electrical Engineering department at Missouri S&T. I didn’t graduate (yet) but I gained most of the knowledge I’ve needed for the deign, assembly and implementation of these designs.
What drives you as far as new pedal creation is concerned? How long does it typically take for an idea to come full circle and become a demo pedal? What’s the process behind new gear, and the eventual release of it to the public?
New pedal designs come about when I hear a tone I really like from a guitar/bass player. I do initial research into what they may use to get that sound and then I begin to formulate a design around that concept. Since so much of a players tone is in their fingers and guitars that I don’t have access to, the final design gets tweaked and tweaked until it is generally nothing like the initial design. This is a fairly time consuming process because I really like to tinker and tweak designs over and over again to see what the specific circuit topography is capable of. it can take a year or more from initial design to release. I really like to make sure I’m proud of what I’m putting my name on and that the design is something that is unique to my company and not just “another” of an already established design.
What are some of the biggest concerns facing your profession today?
The biggest and most obvious concern in the business today is making yourself stand out. The effects pedal market is fairly saturated these days, so in order to stand out you have to be making something that is not only unique and special, you have to do so in a way that is reliable and useful. This kind of market is really exciting for the guitar world and a lot of us builders have a beautifully collaborative mindset. we really like to see what other companies are doing and how they’re pushing the envelope.
Where do you see pedal building going in the future?
One shift in the pedal world that is becoming more and more apparent is pedals that are using digital processing and control in new and exciting ways. Digital has been a bit of a bad word in the guitar world for a long time, but some builders are starting to come up with really cool ways to not only process your sound digitally, but also implement digital control in ways that weren’t possible or too troublesome in an analog format.
Who are some of your favorite builders in the industry right now?
I have really been digging some of the pedal companies out there that are really pushing the envelope when it comes to crazy and new sounds. The first that come to mind are the companies like Dr. Scientist, Cooper FX and Hologram Electronics. I love crazy sounds coming from a guitar and some of these companies out there are really pushing the guitar past its intention and into entire new worlds of sound. I love when companies like Earthquaker and Dwarfcraft create pedals that are nearly instruments on their own.
Name the last 5 records you listened to:
1. Sparkle Hard – Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks
2. Performance – White Denim
3. Tell Me How You Really Feel – Courtney Barnett
4. WARM – Jeff Tweedy
5. Into the Purple Valley – Ry Cooder
The Klon hype: Love it or Hate it?
I love the pedal and design itself, I think it started the real change on what an overdrive should sound like and how it should be a compliment to your natural guitar signal. I think it deserves its popularity, but I think the price point is ridiculous. I use a Klon type overdrive to craft my clean sound, its a master of subtlety. When something is talked about and cloned as much as a Klon, there has to be some validity to its hype.
Any last comments, or anything you’d like to talk about?
I think one thing guitarists really need to get past is how set in our ways we are about tone and how a guitar should sound. The main idea behind this company is for me to explore a little bit of what is possible in the guitar tone world. have fun, experiment, stack 4 fuzzes and revel in the madness.
Thanks so much to Colin for taking the time to answer some questions! Make sure to go check out www.CroyToneAudio.com to peruse all of their gear – Cheers!
Check out some of our other interviews here:
Clint McDuffie of Deep Space Devices
Joe Halliday of Hello Sailor Effects
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