Sunday December 12 * noon-4pm * masks and proof of vaccination required for this indoor workshop
So hi there and greetings from VauxFlores. We’re an audio electronics company of sorts from Ithaca, NY that specializes in sonic oddities that exist in the nebulous gas clouds between the worlds of strange, loud and educational. Meaning we make weird stuff, but more importantly, we’d love to help give you the tools to make your own weird stuff.
For this workshop, we’d like to introduce you to the Number 23. It was the first pedal we designed in 2011 and a decade later, it’s still one of our favorite builds – and oddly enough, it has a bit of a following, go figure. But what is it? Like most of our pedals, it’s a fuzz at heart. More specifically, it’s an octave-up fuzz with a handy wet-dry blend that invokes 70’s buzz bass, garage rock and small-town psychedelia. However, considering that this is the roaring 2020’s and not the seventies, we added a few twists to take a dip into the unknown instead of just putting another quarter into the nostalgia machine. From a technical perspective, this manifests doubly.
First, this critter’s slightly more gated than your usual buzz-machine. Note on, note-off. Maybe a little sustain, but mostly it’s a jagged landscape of plateaus and jagged drops into the terrifying maw of the abyss. Second, and here’s where the magic happens, the box has an internal feedback loop that's just nuts. Engage this beast and this creamy octave box becomes an agent of some ancient Sumerian prophesy involving, I don’t know, alien robot sky gods. I’m not saying there’s an apocalypse on the horizon, but once the full report is declassified, the world will be forever changed. Yeah, that cool. I mean, yeah, it’s just a feedback loop, but given the combination of gating, octaves and, uhm, elvish blood magic, amazing things are conjured by way of oscillating doom, dead transmissions, arpeggiations and dead silence. As in, when you play, crazy happens. When you don’t, crickets. Ok, more like silence. No internal chirping here. It’s pretty fantastic – especially when paired with other pedals. Like I said, I love the thing. I can’t say it's for everyone, but it has its place. Not to mention, hey, you get to build it yourself over the course of an afternoon.
So logistics – the workshop will last for about 4 hours and all materials will be provided. No prior electronics experience is needed and yes, you get to keep the pedal at the end of the workshop. Price is $150 and we recommend bringing a guitar or any other amplified goodies you might want to plug your pedal into for jamming and socializing once complete.
As is tradition with VF workshops, we strive to keep the atmosphere casual, informative, friendly and safe (paramount in the late-pandemic normal - meaning masked and vaxxed) – so feel free to bring a snack and a story and hopefully we’ll all leave as friends at the end of the day. For this workshop, attendance will be limited to 5 and a small VF pop-up shop will be on-site for anyone interested in taking home a couple other oddities without having to solder it themselves.