Who are you guys?

Wattson Classic Electronics is a startup company, currently comprised of two people; Jim and Chris. Between us, we have more than 30 years of experience in engineering, and we are both avid guitarists.

Neither one of us!

Ok, we were talking about what we should name our company. Of course, the thought of using our own names came up (several times!!), but we ultimately decided that was not the way we wanted to go. We want the central theme to be about promoting our great products, and not about promoting our equally huge egos.

Our basic philosophy is to produce products which help you make great music. We want our products to be your best friends, and your closest allies. If you were Batman, then our pedals would be Robin. Get the picture?

So, we started thinking about people in history who have served that role. Having been a huge fan of Arthur Conan Doyle, I immediately thought of Dr. Watson, the faithful assistant of Sherlock Holmes. Ok, he's a fictional character, but there's another real-life historical figure who had a valued assistant named Watson, and that was Alexander Graham Bell.

After that, we began playing around with the name to see what we could do with it. The extra "t" was added in order to slip the word "watts" into the name, as in the measure of electrical power.

The rest was just a matter of branding. We added "Classic" to the brand because we are trying to recreate vintage designs while retaining the classic tone and visual appeal of the originals.

We don't see ourselves that way. In fact, being another "boutique" pedal maker is exactly what we don't want to be.

This isn't just a hobby for us, or a way to make a few extra bucks to pay for our own guitar gear. We're devoted to making Wattson Classic Electronics a major contender in the guitar effects market, and we're taking this challenge very seriously. We want to see our products sold by every music retailer in the world. We're small today, but we're thinking big!

Some boutique pedal makers seem to consider each pedal they make to be a singular work of art, and this is reflected in the astronomical prices they charge. Some of them have gone so far with this arrogance that they somehow believe that they alone are privy to the tone secrets of the universe, and have protected those secrets from prying eyes by sealing their circuits in potting compound, or "goop".

We will never do that.

We provide a schematic diagram with every pedal we sell. We even publish our schematics and manuals on this website (see the support page). In the rare event you have a problem with the pedal, you can either send it to us for repair, or hand it to your favorite tech for service. There are no "secrets" in our pedals.

No, not really.

Since all Wattson Classic Electronics pedals are based on classic effects pedals, they're not really our designs to begin with. We just re-engineered them using modern parts and materials, and added some modern features. We purchase our components and materials in quantity, so it would almost certainly cost you more to build a copy of one of our pedals than it costs us to build one, mainly because of the extra money we put into quality parts and custom enclosures. Even so, you could still probably build one for less than it would cost to buy it from us, assuming you were willing to settle for an aluminum can or brick for a chassis. If you're a "do-it-yourself" type of person, and are inclined to build rather than buy one of our pedals, feel free to go for it! As long as you aren't pasting our name on the box, then we have no problem with it.

If we design a pedal with a truly unique or innovative design or circuit, then we'll protect it with a patent. That's the proper way to protect intellectual property - not by filling the case with goop.

We don't think that a hand-painted aluminum brick deserves to be called a reproduction of a vintage classic pedal, no matter how great the pedal sounds. Yes, the tone is definitely the most important factor, but it's not the ONLY factor. When your options are to either shell out a short stack of Benjamins on a real vintage pedal, or buy one of the many available reproductions of that effect, we think you deserve to have one that captures the style of that vintage pedal, as well as it's tone. We hope you agree.

The custom enclosure does initially add to the cost of building the pedal. However, the cost difference gradually disappears as the quantity of pedals we build increases. Eventually, we'll reach a point where our custom designed enclosures are costing us less than those other guys are paying to buy, drill, and paint those cast aluminum bricks. In the business world this is known as "economy of scale". Not only is this how those big companies can afford to sell their pedals so cheaply, it's also how they got to be big companies in the first place.

Besides, when your guitar playing buds are checking out your pedal board, do you want all of your pedals to look like finger painted bricks?

Ah, glad you asked!

In fact, we will be designing some new pedals. However, we won't be selling them under the Wattson Classic Electronics brand name. After all, a new pedal wouldn't be a classic, would it?

The Classic brand is only one of several brands we have planned.

Our major label is Wattson Electronics. There will eventually be several sub-brands under this label. Wattson Classic Electronics is only the first.

We're not ready to announce all of the brands we intend to introduce, mainly because we're still working it out ourselves. However, there are two which we definitely plan to introduce within the next two years. Wattson Effects will be the brand for the new effects pedals we design which are not based on any pre-existing circuit. Wattson Amps will be the brand for our newly designed tube amplifiers. Stay tuned for more on these upcoming brands and products.