It's like Netflix for pedals!
Imagine for a minute that your own personal genie appeared before your eyes, just like in the movies. Being a musician, the first thing you'd probably ask your new supernatural friend for (after signing him on as your manager, of course) would be gear. Poof! The smoke clears and you've got Pedal Genie, an unlimited access to an amazing lending library for effects pedals. Poof! The second cloud clears, and it turns out the service delivers, mailing the pedals of your choice direct to your door. Now, you usually get three wishes in this sort of scenario, right? Okay then, a third and final Poof! makes it so you never have to pay a late fee, no matter how long you hang onto any particular pedal. It's like Netflix for effects!
But there's no dream to wake up from, you really do have your own musical genie making all this possible: Pedal Genie. So why does Pedal Genie provide this service to musicians? Well for one thing, we understand the importance pedals can have for a player. Whether we're talking about the old-school fuzzbox that enabled Jimi Hendrix to crank out the classic riff to "Purple Haze" or the complex army of effects Jonny Greenwood employs to craft cascading soundscapes for Radiohead, a pedal is an extension of your own instrument. So choosing just the right one is an intensely personal decision that's poorly served by rushing into a music store where you're surrounded by kids simultaneously playing the intro to "Iron Man" out of tune. You should have the luxury to take your time with new gear, don’t be forced in making a hasty decision about something as special as your own sound and style.
Wouldn't you rather be able to try out some of those pedals in the privacy of your own home, studio, or practice space for as long as you want, using your own setup? Hell, wouldn't you want to try them all if you could? Well, now you can. You can blaze through as many different pedals as you want, or you can hang onto a single one indefinitely until you're sure how it will impact your sound. Not only will you wind up avoiding the costly mistake of buying something you haven't had a chance to really delve into, you'll discover sounds you hadn't even considered before because you never had this kind of luxury till now.
How important is the right effects setup to your sound? Ask legendary axeman Johnny Marr, of the Smiths, Electronic, and Modest Mouse, among others. He told the Denver Westword, "I kind of think what I do is like producing with my feet…I'm always changing reverb [settings] and modulation types and the very sorts of things that [maybe no one else realizes what's going on], but it keeps me interested. I think because I come from a time before that was possible, it's a magical thing for me."
Tom Morello, whose one-of-a-kind guitar style has burned brightly with Rage Against the Machine, Audioslave, and even Bruce Springsteen, said this to Guitar World about developing his unique sound: "I stumbled on the toggle switch. I combined it with a wah-wah pedal, and all of a sudden there was a noise that I had never heard a guitar player make. It sounded more like a sort of synthesizer. I went from having a sneaking suspicion to feeling certain that the odd guitar playing was my voice on the instrument, that it was the thing that I had in common with the guitar players I liked—a uniqueness. I just ran with that, and have been running with that ever since.”
It's Pedal Genie's mission to connect musicians with the right effects. Not just the ones they want, but the ones they never knew they needed because they didn't have the opportunity to find out. For one low monthly fee, Pedal Genie offers musicians endless opportunities to evolve their sound, whether that means expanding, refining, making a subtle shift, or switching things up entirely. The bottom line is: we want to make it as easy as humanly possible to shape the sound that works the best for you.
