A patent was awarded by the US Patent Office in 2013 for the Sawmill design. With the rise of the internet and the free flow of information, it has been increasingly difficult to protect original designs. While the result of all this is cheaper pedals for the masses, it also creates a reluctance for talented designers to continue in the marketplace. Long term this hurts the whole industry.

The patent approval process is a difficult process with a Patent Examiner trying to find reason to disapprove the application. Of course every challenge from the examiner has to go through a lawyer which always costs more dollars. In the end we were able to defend the challenges from the examiner and a patent was awarded. If you want to see innovative designs, please support our effort. Pedal designers, if you are interested in licensing the design or if you want to know more about the patent process for a pedal design, please contact us.

Thought it might be good to describe the design philosophy behind the Gizmoaudio Sawmill. Our philosophy here is to create a pedal that augments your tube amp tone. We believe pedals should behave like the amp in terms of playing dynamics. Pedals should have a gentler coloration and allow the guitar and amp to shine through. An illustration of this is one of my all time favorite songs, “Lights” by Journey.

Alot of pedals tend to squash your dynamics. This is due to the clipping that happens with diode type distortion. When the waveform goes above the threshold voltage of the diodes, the wave is clipped to only go to this threshold. Any voltage above this is limited to the threshold. Since the dynamics of your playing are contained in the amplitude variations, this limiting action strips the dynamics and makes the sound seem compressed. There have been various ways to get away from this by adding a blended clean channel to the distorted channel. This is what the Klon and the Sparkle Drive do. This restores the dynamics somewhat although the distorted path is still compressed.

At Gizmoaudio we have taken an approach where the transition between clean and distorted is gradual and changes with your playing dynamics. This allows the pedal to respond like the tube amp it is connected to so that it augments the sound of the amp instead of covering it up with fizzy hissiness. A lot of people in the pedal world believe there is nothing new under the sun but this is a new design and a patent has been applied for to protect the technology. This first pedal in our lineup, the Sawmill, is targeted for the worship, country, and blues venues. This gradual transition between clean and distorted is what most people like. You can go from clean to distorted with just how hard you pluck your strings. We will be producing new pedals in the future with more extreme distortion but they will all still have this extreme touch sensitivity.

If you want to hear examples of this on our website listen to the Jimmy Wooten sound samples. You can also hear this in Brett Kingman’s video at about -4:05 where he emphasizes his playing dynamics to show the pedal breaking up.

Charles Luke for Gizmoaudio 3/31/2012

Wow! Gear Talk Expo 2012 was awsome. Met Mark Echard of Fat Pig Amps and shared a demo room with him. Some of the best amps on the planet. We made alot of friends and heard some of the best guitar playing in a while. Sold some pedals. We plan on working with Mark on future shows. Had a lot of people come through and try my pedals. Lance Seymour, the organizer for the expo, now has a Sawmill on his pedal board. Peter Stroud, lead guitarist for Sheryl Crow, wants a Ripsaw.

New pedals coming soon – new case design for the ripsaw almost done.

Come out to Gear Talk Expo March 22nd in Atlanta. Gizmoaudio will be sharing a demo room with Fat Pig Amplification. For more info look at Gear Talk Expo event on Facebook.