Treasure Chest!

“I love to sail forbidden seas, and land on barbarous coasts.”
― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, The Whale

Unlike previous FLB pedals, this is not an original circuit, built from scratch to capture the sound of a particular band/album.

This is in fact FLB’s first foray into the world of modified classic circuitry. 

You’ll also notice that it is our first foray into dual pedal territory; we figured why give you one modified classic circuit when we could give you two! We’re nice like that.

So, I suppose I should tell you why we are throwing you this curve ball?

Well, it’s all Matt Webster’s fault. The Treasure Chest is his signature boost pedal to accompany the 1991; which I am very proud to say he considers to be his signature overdrive.

There I was, happily tinkering away on my breadboard, crafting new and awesome circuits to capture some much-loved band’s sound when Mr. Let’s Play All pipes up and says he wants a tube screamer and a klon in one pedal.

To add a bit of context to that, as well as hosting an awesome YouTube channel, Matt is one of the guitarists in a fantastic Pearl Jam tribute band. They recently started gigging again and as such Matt fired up his pedal board; you may have seen the video he made about said pedal board which featured not one but two 1991 pedals and he talked about how he uses the two 1991’s in conjunction with a klone to achieve all the rhythm and lead sounds that he needed.

The TS and Klon were requested specifically so that when paired with the 1991 he would get all the Mike McCready (TS) and Stone Gossard (Klon) sounds he needed and fully complete his live sound.

And so, after a bit of discussion regarding the boring things like form factor and functionality I set to work.

Messing with classic circuits is alien to me. I know most builders got into the game via modifying classic circuits and learned their trade that way. This is undeniably the sensible way to do it.

That’s not my story though, and whereas as a result my journey has probably been a fair bit messier with way more failures than the average pedal builder; I also bring something different to the table. However, for this to be the best it could be, that indefinable “thing” that I bring to the table wasn’t really what was required; at least not in the main.

Whereas I am a passionate amateur that got lucky; what was needed for this was a consummate professional who knows these circuits like the back of their hand and has spent a decade modifying, refining and if I may be so bold as to say so; perfecting them.

Enter Mr. Simon Andrews of Just Some Audio (JSA) Effects.

You may not be familiar with his pedals, but you should hopefully be familiar with his name as I have mentioned it an awful lot.

Simon is an integral part of the FLB story; from way back before FLB leapt headlong into pedal design and production when it was a retailer for small UK builders and second-hand pedals.

I had first become aware of Simon via another builder, who had licensed an excellent circuit from him for use in a pedal which I stocked and sold a fair few of. A few weeks after starting to sell this pedal Simon himself got in touch to offer me some items from his “Shelf of Forgotten Pedals” and tell me that if I ever asked him to make me a fuzz pedal, his response would be, in no uncertain terms to go and fuck myself.

We got on like a house on fire and I continued to stock his pedals until FLB changed course, but even then Simon remained a close confidant and he is credited as a fellow designer on the 1991 as well as having been a consultant on the Dirt and my first port of call whenever I am in need of advice.

Having built more iterations of the tube screamer and klon over a decade in the game than I would consider to be healthy; it’s safe to say that what Simon doesn’t know about these circuits isn’t worth knowing.

As such, the circuits in the Treasure Chest are not designed by me; they are designed by Simon. I could have let my ego get in the way of the best possible product and spent ages fucking around with ts and klon variants of my own, but I knew from the get go that I wouldn’t be able to as good a job as Simon… so why try?

This wouldn’t be the first time that I had discussed licensing Simon’s circuits, but it is the first time that there was a truly compelling reason to do so.

I should make it clear here that this is a mutually beneficial arrangement. Due to several health problems, Simon is unable to make any real quantity of the circuits he designs and as such they often remain as either one offs or extremely limited runs and as such can be like gold dust.

The Treasure Chest allows players mass access to two of Simon’s finest circuits; in a single pedal; at an affordable price.

Now I have made this all sound very easy, get someone else to do the work and then bung it all in a pretty looking box for all of you to enjoy. I can assure you that an enormous amount of work has gone into this from all parties; Matt, myself, Simon; but perhaps none more so than Marc Dunberry of Soundlad Liverpool fame; another friend, mentor and collaborator who has been a part of the FLB story since the very earliest days.

Taking two complex circuits which rely on a number of “mojo” components and making them suitable for large scale production with easy to get hold of components and no compromise in sounds; shrinking them down and making them fit in one, standard size enclosure is not easy, not at all, and a huge part of that difficulty lay in the pcb design and caused Marc no end of headaches. But as always, he rose to the challenge and then some.

The superb artwork comes courtesy of one of Matt’s skate-art heroes Jimbo Phillips whose artwork adorns a number of items of clothing that you will have seen in Matt’s videos. Jimbo played an absolute blinder with this graphic, we literally gave him the name of the pedal to work with, and from that alone he came up with something truly great.

In terms of the sounds, I’m going to let Matt’s video do the talking on that one as I’ve rattled on for ages already. All I will say is that it sounds superb and is insanely versatile by default.

I am extremely proud to be adding the Treasure Chest to the Funny Little Boxes lineup, and I really can’t wait for you all to get your hands on it and making awesome music.

Like all FLB pedals, the Treasure Chest is proudly built to the highest standards in the fine city of Norwich, England and priced at £99.