Differential Audio Manifestationz. D*A*M Stompboxes for short. The name is kinda self explanatory, right? We manifest audio products that aim to make a difference within the sonic realms of your reality. We've been making the world a warmer and fuzzier place since October 2004, unofficially since November 2001. We hail from the dank and the wet environment of South Yorkshire, England and our lo-fi production team consists of one man, David A Main (that would be me) and one woman, Linzi Haynes.

So what's the plan?

We make Fuzz Boxes. Old school ballsy sounding Fuzz Boxes. That's our thing. For sure you'll see the odd booster and an overdrive box in our ranks but these are squeezed in tight with the D*A*M scheme of things. Our style of construction and the sounds these little boxes produce are of days gone by. Simple, to the point, honest I guess you could say. We cut through the shit and offer you a product with a flavour rich in heritage styled for the now. Compact, solid, reliable, trust worthy little boxes of primeval funk.

Our pedals are made by hands.

Its all pretty lo-fi here. We don't use any printed circuit boards (PCB's) in our designs so the circuits themselves are assembled using hand prepared stripboard, without the use of any toxic solvents or chemicals I might add. All of our enclosures are powder or nylon coated which minimises any airborne pollutants into the atmosphere and we try to only buy from component manufacturers with good green policies. We use no plastic in our packaging, only recycled and recyclable unbleached card, hemp paper and Hessian bags. Its very important to us that we produce these boxes without adding to mom's work load. We like the idea of these pedals being made like that. They are not supposed to be made as a never ending steam of the same thing being made over and over again. At its core we are just expressing our creativity. Who wants to paint the same picture for the rest of their life?

Less is more

While the majority of D*A*M pedals are very simple in design they do rely on careful selecting of components, especially the pedals that use discrete components (transistors rather than Integrated Chips), to achieve the correct tones. Germanium elements would be the main culprit for taking up time and need careful testing; you can't just pull one out of a box and expect it to sound right. Certain tests need to be done before a part is even considered for use within a pedal and even then it could still fail the test pedal. Germanium fuzz boxes in particular need careful transistor tests due to the circuit designs requiring more than one Germanium device. Three sets of tests are done before I can even use a set of transistors in a pedal. Leakage, hfe & stability tests followed by hfe selection into the appropriate matched sets and then finally sound tests in a test pedal. Only then can the parts go into a finished pedal and that has to be done for each and every pedal without fail. Its quite a lengthy drawn-out process but more than worth it knowing someone will let rip with the finished pedal and will hopefully have a shit eating grin the size of the moon.

In a nutshell, the original idea for D*A*M way back when was basically about creating a balanced fusion between the old and new. In its rawest form, a fat bellied stinky old fuzz circuit lovingly crammed into a rugged small footprint sized stompbox. I guess we're still rolling with that plan.

...simple but effective.

David Andrew Main ~ Captain of the ship