Basic Audio

The shop's pedals cover familiar ground for players browsing fuzz, overdrive and distortion, with models such as the Shore Bird, the Scarab Deluxe, the Nonts, the Face, the Super Fuzz, the Gnarly Fuzz and The Futureman.

A one-man pedal shop

Basic Audio is a single builder, not a company with a production line. The maker's own words on his store pages set expectations for anyone ordering³¹:

For a player, that means a pedal comes from a one man shop, and the maker asks customers to be patient while pedals are assembled¹.

That scale also explains the shop's stock pattern. Models appear, sell out, and return in small runs. The Oscix, for example, is listed as sold out on the maker's page³, while other models remain listed. Availability is best judged from the maker's own store at any given moment.

Finishes that change from build to build

Basic Audio does not promise a fixed look. Across its product pages, from the Nonts¹ and the Face⁴ to the Alter-Destory [sic] and other models¹⁴², the maker repeats the same line:

For a player, this means two things:

• The pedal you receive may not match the photograph on the store page, as pedal colors are subject to change⁴.
• Finishes are not a menu of options chosen at checkout; the maker states that pedal colors are subject to change⁴.

This differs from makers that sell enclosure finish as a separate product. GUPtech, for example, sells a custom color option as its own item, though it applies only to pedals in the regular 125B enclosure and not to double or triple pedals⁵. Basic Audio's approach is the opposite: no finish is guaranteed, and none is sold as an extra.

Power and practical details

One practical detail the maker does state for the whole range: every Basic Audio pedal has a battery snap³. That suits players who want to run a pedal without a power supply, and it is worth knowing when planning a pedalboard, since a battery adds height inside the enclosure.

The maker also states his shipping range on his product pages: USA, Canada, Europe, Asia, Australia². Players outside the United States can order directly rather than through a distributor.

Circuits: one example of how the range works

The range includes variations on a circuit rather than one fixed design per name. The germanium version of the Bye-Bias is described by the maker as "Based on the silicon Bye-Bias but essentially a different pedal"⁶. In practice, that means a player comparing the two should treat them as separate pedals, not as the same circuit with a different transistor type.

Availability and sold-out models

Basic Audio is a one man shop, so assembly takes time and sold-out listings appear on the maker's store. The table below shows what the maker's own store pages say about the models covered on this page¹³.

Where a model is not listed as sold out, it is simply listed on the maker's store; the maker does not publish a discontinued list, so a live store page is the clearest available signal that a pedal can still be ordered.

The range (7)

Questions