A question we get asked a lot is “how does someone become a signature artist and get their own pedal?”. Well, as with everything else, there is no rule book, but if there was one it would contain so many variables it would be impossible to give an explanation of the sure-fire route.

Right now we have a signature pedal at proto stage, one in ‘headscratching’ phase, and another in the negotiation phase, so it’s safe to say that this is subject that’s in my head a lot at the moment. So, for my own benefit in the process of consolidating all the information, I can give you a run-down of what is needed.

Let’s start at the business end of things. Why does a company bring out a signature unit? The obvious answer to that is the mysterious phenomenon known as “exposure”. If you look at our first two, Brent Mason and Brad Paisley (who now has 2, the regular and the deluxe), it’s easy to see why we did it. We were a very young company when Brent and Brian worked on the original Hot Wired, and when it was released it instantly gave us a good reputation and a great platform to market the brand from, and go on to have the brand come to the attention of a lot of people, myself included. I cannot begin to tell you what this pedal did for us as a company… Brent is one of the most respected musicians in the world, so to have his name on a pedal and have him use that pedal on countless recordings was massive to us. A couple of years later, we launched the Paisley Drive (the first release I was involved in) and that exploded the brand to a much bigger audience around the world and it’s safe to say that the high-end pedal world was now completely aware of Wampler and what we could do… 3 years after that, we did the signature pedal – the Dual Fusion – that made everyone say “What?” and has gone on to become one of the best-selling Wamplers of all time.

Tom Quayle was a relative unknown at the time, big amongst a certain genre of players (who followed him fanatically), but to the rest of the world, unknown. What we wanted from Tom was to not only bring the pedal into his genre (which was exploding), but also be part of a pedal that he was already using (although in separate units) that we felt could be massive to the market – provided we could match up our vision for it with his (which luckily for all involved was extremely simple, it was great fun working out how we wanted it and thinking up the features at the time what were revolutionary). He had found his tone with the Euphoria and Paisley stacked, and we knew that a dual pedal with these two elements (althought modified to suit him and the single pedal format) would be enormous. Also, having got to know him, we knew that he would market the living daylights out of that pedal at countless trade shows, videos, social media outlets, and just about everywhere else… Tom is one of the most hardworking guitar players I know that is often appearing at seminars, shows… just about everywhere around the world. We also knew that providing he stay true to himself (which to anyone who knows Tom knows that is what he always does) at some point in the future the rest of the industry was going to catch up with us and his name and picture would all over the place.

What does all of the above mean when looking at it closely it? Well, to a signature artist you have to fall into 1 of 3 categories:

  1. Is their idea for a pedal so unique and original that you have to sign them up then and there to being this piece of genius to market? (extremely unlikely, I would say impossible – “Hey man, I’ve got a great idea for a new pedal, no one has ever done this before”… the reality is – they may not have done it, but I can almost guarantee you that one of us would have thought about it at some point and gone on to discard the concept.)
  2. Is the artist in question so famous, and relevant, that just having their name on your pedal will explode your brand around the world? (unlikely, but when they come along, happy days – I mean, no one in their right mind would turn down a superstar like Brent or Brad.)
  3. Is the concept of the artist/pedal combination something that people will relate to – and will the artist network/promote you so much that the amount of traction gained from your combined marketing efforts going to make something truly special? (the most likely)

Now, it’s fairly obvious that as of today, we’ve had two #2’s and a #3 in our list. A lot of people mistakenly think that in order to get a deal you need to be #1 (everyone thinks they have THE next big idea which is usually, well… not so big), a lot of the people who think they are #2 are usually a few years past that point of their career (or are in no way big enough to even think about it) so think it will be a steady income stream for them for doing nothing, yet no one thinks about the concept of #3.

In order to be a signature artist, you have to have something special. Yes, you need to have the talent and ears to make it even to discussion stage, but what about the rest of it? To do it, and do it successfully, you have to work HARD to get there and even harder to keep it going… The main thing to remember that as a business we like to sell a lot of pedals and it is an aggressive marketplace out there with countless elements working against you. We’ve found that the people who even make it past the initial nanosecond of consideration are not in the least bit concerned with the monetary aspect (the commission) and are only interested in realising their vision for their sound by working together, combining ours and their marketing platforms, and most importantly… the vision for the future of both ours and their brand. In a nutshell – you have to jump in with both feet and take a ride with us, and sit right up front!

As you can imagine, I’ve seen a lot of people make a pass at us for signature units, Winter NAMM is a classic one where a lot of players are walking around in dark glasses trying their hardest to be noticed whilst looking like they are trying not to be noticed –  and this year, most of the time, all I wanted to say to them is this: “You see that guy over there… the quiet one with the new signature Ibanez, yeah… him. He’s called Tom. Be like him.”

The owner of this website has made a committment to accessibility and inclusion, please report any problems that you encounter using the contact form on this website. This site uses the WP ADA Compliance Check plugin to enhance accessibility.
0
    0
    Your Cart
    Your cart is emptyReturn to Shop