March 20, 2006.
That’s the day I originally created my youtube channel.
Originally, I wasn’t intending on creating a lot of youtube videos, but to be fair I don’t think many people that it would take off as big and as fast as it did. This was back when Myspace was still somewhat of a ‘thing’, before Facebook was popular, and basically before Social Media in general was what most of us would use the internet for when we were in line at McDonalds waiting to place our order. Forums were huge during these days. “Boutique” pedals were just beginning to become mainstream, and a majority of my business was built around DIY, pedal mods, and writing DIY books.
On October 11, 2006 I uploaded my first two videos. They were simply discussing the similarities between the tubescreamer and the Boss SD-1 circuits. My voice, in all of it’s youthful naivety, displayed calm, introversion, and a meekness that is quite unlike me these days. My reason for creating the video was simply to help explain a question I was getting frequently.
Being that Youtube was just a video sharing website at that time, I uploaded another video of my then 6 year old son playing drums in order to share with my family who didn’t live nearby.
Around the beginning of 2007, I started noticing how quickly Youtube was growing. Periodically I would upload videos of different things, trying to gauge what others might want to see. My thought was that if I could provide something entertaining or valuable in some way to guitar players, then perhaps they would take notice of Wampler Pedals (which was called IndyGuitarist at that time), and hopefully I could make a living by turning my part time business into a full time business. Videos that year ranged from a demo of a Crate Blue Voodoo, to my thoughts on designing guitar pedals, showing prototypes, and a few videos from hanging out with Brent Mason. Around this time I had started a podcast as well, but it wasn’t called Chasing Tone. It’s no longer around though.
2008 was a year when many things changed, both in my personal life and the business. I went through a divorce in February, and ended up moving 3 times that year. I went full speed ahead with the business. I stopped doing remodeling completely, which was what my main job was up to that point. Remodeling work completely dried up due to the economy at that time. Working out of a 400 square foot apartment I barely slept and worked around the clock trying to build the business up. Later that year I ran into Amanda and we began dating, eventually marrying.
Little by little we began growing, despite the lagging economy. I soon realized that I couldn’t continue focusing on both DIY projects and a pedal company; I had to choose one. I was fairly indecisive on it…. Both IndyGuitarist (DIY) and Wampler (pedals) were both bringing in about the same revenue at the end of the day. I simply took a chance, picked one, and hoped for the best.
The pedal business continuously kept growing, slowly but surely. I was starting to realize that building the actual pedals was not my forte… it’s fun building them for sure, but building the same pedal over, and over, and over grew very boring and tedious for me. We started hiring staff. I began using an outside manufacturer to build our pedals based in Kentucky.
We moved offices multiple times. Once we decided to hire staff we rented a small house to work out of. We grew out of that quickly into a bigger office. Then, a bigger office.
I’ll be brutally honest. Around this time the pedal business stopped being fun. I was having to focus more on the day-to-day running of the business rather than creative endeavors like designing new pedals. We had outgrown our manufacturer and it was limiting our ability to supply our retailers. I was completely stressed out 99% of the time. I needed a change, I needed it to be fun again.
So, I changed our model completely. In 2016 I connected with Boutique Amps Distribution which was building Bogner Pedals, Friedman Amps, Morgan Amps, and also had several other brands under their umbrella. We struck up a deal that would change everything yet again, but in a good way. Partnering with them, I was able to still specify exactly how I wanted them to build our pedals, but was now able to let them handle the B2B sales (business to business) and distribution, which meant I was completely able to focus on working with end users (our customers), work on new designs including branching out into DSP, and create fun youtube videos.
And here I am… having fun once again!
So there you go, there’s some behind the scenes history that you may or may not have known. If you’ve watched our Youtube channel since then you’ve probably noticed it’s changed multiple times since 2006.
It’s been a fun 13 years, I’ve enjoyed the journey with some amazing people who I’ve been lucky to work with, and I’m curious to see where we are in another 13 years!
I have a Blue VooDoo and would absolutely love a copy of your notes on Mods to get it sounding it’s best! Thanks again! Chris
Same here!! I would love to Mod mine as per your specs. I have not found a single copy and the tech willing to do it for me (from memory) is all they way across the USA. Do you still have a copy?
Me too! these plans are a treasure that no one can find.
Mega please?