Demedash Effects

A one-man company in Winnipeg

Demedash Effects describes itself plainly: "Demedash Effects is a one-man company run by myself, Steve Demedash."¹ Everything is built in the same city the company calls home, and its own pages carry the line "Made with love in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada."¹

The company's history in pictures goes back to at least 2018, when a photo caption on its site reads "Humble Beginnings: Packing Pedals in 2018," and a May 2021 caption shows "Sending orders out after a drop."¹ Those captions also describe how the company sells: pedals go out in drops rather than through a permanently stocked store.

Known for tape echo and analog modulation

Demedash's reputation rests on two lines of pedals, the T-120 echo family and the T-60 modulator².

• T-120 Videotape Echo v2: a delay pedal with modulation controls, described by the maker as "Part tape machine and part nostalgia engine, the T-120 is a modern classic that shouldn't be underestimated." It uses no DSP³. RockBoard lists its circuit type as hybrid⁴.
• T-120 Deluxe V2: "All the tape-worn sounds of the T-120 Videotape Echo v2 with some useful add-ons for those that need to cover more ground," and it is DSP-free⁵.
• T-60 Analog Modulator: a fully analog signal path with a digitally generated LFO, which the maker says "combines the gorgeous sound of a classic analog BBD device with the as-of-yet unseen possibilities granted by g"⁶ modern control.

The T-120 Videotape Echo is an echo pedal inspired by worn-out video tape audio, and Demedash says of it that "the T-120 Videotape Echo gives you exactly the type of sound that you're hearing in your head when you look at it," with no DSP used⁷.

Beyond echo and modulation, the range includes the 112+, a dirt pedal whose "Tube-like saturation, a fully active 3-band EQ, 3 different gain modes, enormous 32 Volt headroom" the maker says "have earned the 112+ its proper place among classic dirt pedals"⁸, and the Solaris, a chorus pedal that began in 2019 as an attempt to replicate the classic Solina String Ensemble's Tri-Chorus section in a smaller form factor⁹. The company also publishes a DIY build guide, the Business Card, a "fairly simple circuit, with a nice, hot output thanks to the high clipping threshold," with technical notes such as a 470pF capacitor that "rounds off the sharper edges of the clipped waveform, lending a compressed sound when edging into overdrive"¹⁰.

Design approach: a strong core sound, then extended

Steve Demedash describes his design philosophy as starting with an unusual take on an effect, making sure it sounds good before anything fancy is switched on, and only then pushing it further¹:

That approach shows up across the range. The T-120's core is a tape-worn echo sound, and the Deluxe V2 extends it with add-ons for players who need more ground covered⁵. The T-60 keeps an analog BBD audio path at its core and extends it with a digitally generated LFO for control possibilities the maker describes as previously unseen⁶. The Solaris starts from a classic string-machine chorus and shrinks it into pedal form⁹.

Demedash and the Tallon Electric Banshee

Demedash's name appears on at least one other maker's pedal. The Tallon Electric Banshee "is engineered with DSP processing under license from Demedash Effects," according to RockBoard's listing¹¹. So while Demedash licenses its DSP processing to Tallon Electric for that pedal, the Banshee is a Tallon Electric product, not a Demedash release. Demedash's own T-120 echo pedals, by contrast, are built without DSP³.

Staying in touch and buying

Because pedals are sold in drops, the way to know when stock arrives is through the company's own channels¹:

• Newsletters sent whenever a new release is impending or has arrived, with no unnecessary spam¹
• Instagram at @demedasheffects¹

The range (8)

Questions