Vemuram announces Butter Machine distortion pedal with Michael Landau
October 20, 2023 · 2 sources
Vemuram has announced the Butter Machine, a distortion pedal developed in collaboration with guitarist Michael Landau, MusicRadar reported on October 20, 2023. The pedal is priced at $385 and is available for preorder at Thomann and Andertons in Europe1.
According to RockBoard's PedalPedia listing, the Butter Machine was developed with Landau "to create his ideal distortion pedal," and Vemuram made countless prototypes over more than two years of research and development. Landau used the prototypes at sessions and on tour, and the company says it tested them at his recording sessions and at his home studio in Los Angeles2. MusicRadar reports that Landau had used Vemuram pedals for a decade, starting with the Jan Ray, and that a discussion with founder Shingo Hirano and CEO Daiya Tezuka led to a distortion pedal intended to replace his Maxon SD-9 for high gain. Tezuka's aim, per MusicRadar, was to keep what Landau liked about the SD-9 without what he did not, and the guitarist toured with prototypes in 2022 and 20231.
The controls are gain, volume and tone knobs plus two trim pots. MusicRadar describes the Sparkle trim as a peaking boost centered around the 6k mark for high-end crunch, and the Low-Mid trim as tuning the level of bottom end1. RockBoard lists an analog circuit, 9V DC center-negative power and 12mA current draw2.
"It has fain and sustains for days. Yet it stays clear, punchy and solid when you roll the volume back on your guitar."
Landau also told MusicRadar that Vemuram "has designed the best distortion pedal that I have ever played through"1. Vemuram describes the pedal as allowing control of picking nuance and dynamics, with drive going "from overdrive to full-on distortion effortlessly"2.