Guitar guru strikes positive chord


Jeffrey Gilmartin of Holyoke Community College is a talented young musician and a budding businessman who creates custom guitar pedals. Reminder Publications photo by Mike Briotta

April 12, 2010

By Mike Briotta

PRIME Editor

HOLYOKE -- According to popular legend, Les Paul famously combined a common piece of lumber with a guitar bridge, neck and pickup -- and unwittingly gave rise to the defining guitar sounds of rock 'n' roll.

While other luthiers had produced electric guitars since the late 1920s, the talented musician pioneered and popularized of one of the first solid-body electric guitars.

If such musical trailblazers still exist today, Jeffrey Gilmartin of Holyoke Community College (HCC) is certainly among them.

Gilmartin is something of a Renaissance man, who not only approaches playing the guitar progressively, but is fabricating his own effects pedal -- starting from a schematic on a drawing board and crafting it all the way through to a finished prototype. His business acumen is also sharp; he's looking to start his own boutique guitar-pedal shop.

His fledgling company, called Savoonga Sonics, was named for a tiny Inuit village that also provided musical inspiration for one of his favorite bands. The band's sound was a musical m lange that offered him inspiration for his pedals. "I wanted to make sounds that would come out of that place," he said.

Gilmartin, a sophomore at HCC, was recently awarded this year's Kittredge Center Mini-Grant, a $500 award given to budding entrepreneurs to enable them to obtain further skills in their chosen field, attend conferences or purchase materials needed to enhance their business.

He said the grant money is being used to purchase the parts and tools needed to make a prototype of a boutique guitar pedal, an electronic circuit board that connects the electric guitar and the amplifier to create unique sound effects and tones.

"I've already opened a small business account with Bank of America, although I've yet to register as an LLC. I'll probably do that once I get a full prototype under my belt," he explained.

The 20-year-old entrepreneur knew his idea to make a highly customized, yet affordable, guitar pedal would have guaranteed demand among fellow musicians -- and its unique sound would differentiate it from others on the market. While the digital and computer-based software effects of the modern age offer advantages, many guitarists still prefer the analog effects and simple-to-use switches provided by foot pedals.

Each style of foot pedal produces a unique sound effect, although some people refer to them generically as stomp-boxes or wah-wah pedals. They're typically given colorful names to reflect their musical personalities.

One of the most popular guitar foot pedals is the Big Muff, and other notable names include the Electric Mistress and Superfuzz. Gilmartin's pedal is expected to make magical noises, so his prototype will be called Abracadabra.

He described the new guitar sound that will be created by the foot pedal, which is still just an abstract idea: "It's like a pointillist painting, where in order to paint the color green, you only paint blue and yellow dots. It creates the effect of a green brush stroke, but with dots."

He added, "You get the extremes of both the up and down octaves. Runs from the bottom to the top of the neck would open sonic possibilities that haven't been done before."

His company should be unusual in this area, and also create pedals that are sonically unique, thus establishing a product that potential competitors wouldn't be able to easily copy.

"I know a couple people around here that modify pedals, but I don't know of any companies that build them in this area," Gilmartin said. "And nobody on the market has put these effects into one box before."

The Abracadabra, once completed, is expected to produce a "clean" channel of sound while simultaneously being able to reproduce that original sound one octave down and one octave up. What's new about this idea is that Gilmartin's pedal will also feed the octave-down signal into the octave-up sound, creating new musical possibilities.

Gilmartin is a dual major in music and retail management. He actually has a lot in common with the grant's backer, Michael Kittredge, chairman emeritus and founder of Yankee Candle. Kittredge is a former musician who played guitar in a rock band during his teens. Gilmartin not only works with pedals, but also plays progressive guitar in a start-up band at HCC.

Ultimately, his Savoonga shop could partner with local companies to produce the pedals more effectively, while retaining the hands-on creativity of a boutique maker. "Ideally, what I'd really like to do is find a local company that prints circuit boards," he said. "A company that would be able to apply the chemicals used in producing the boards, and also drilling the small holes."

Finding obscure, unique or just hard-to-find materials was just one of his hurdles.

"All of the parts I ordered are coming from Thailand," the young inventor said. "Customs officials are probably taking a long look at those packages. I discovered that a lot of the parts I needed were hard to find locally. A lot of stores around here didn't seem to have them."

He compared making the expensive prototype pedal to a giant pharmaceutical company struggling to create the first dose of a new medication. "The first pill costs them millions to make [in research and development]," Gilmartin said. "After that, the rest of the pills cost pennies."

It's a market in which rare pedals can fetch anywhere from $900 to $2,000, according to Gilmartin. However, he's more interested in getting pedals into the hands (and ultimately, under the feet) of fellow guitarists at a price point that Gilmartin would be more comfortable with. "I don't want to go above the $200 range," he said. "Because that's how much I would be willing to pay for a similar foot pedal."

Although custom-made pedals can be costly to purchase, Gilmartin said his goal is to develop a model that could be mass-produced at a lower cost, while maintaining the integrity of a boutique pedal. He's tinkered with pedal boxes before, soldering and connecting pieces together; however, this would be the first time he's built a pedal from the ground up. His product is now about halfway to completion.

Gilmartin said that various metropolitan areas around North America are know for specific types of effects pedals: Portland, Ore., is famous for fuzz, or distortion; Montreal has tremolo, or sudden changes in volume; and the Southern U.S. is famous for wah-wah, or sudden changes in pitch. Who knows? Western Massachusetts could become known for Gilmartin's brand of multi-octave sounds.

The proof is in the growing demand for his soon-to-be-produced pedals. The waiting list for his new creation already has more than two dozen names on it.

"Right now the waiting list is 25 people deep," he said. "And every week, more people are expressing interest." If you're not among the first 25 on the list, don't fret. He's planning on having a long career making custom pedals.

Anyone interested in getting on the Abracadabra list may do so by e-mailing the request to savoongafx@gmail.com.

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