ASK EQD : Karl Vorndran
Welcome back, pedal lovers. We here at EarthQuaker love to interact with the people who use our stuff. We appreciate hearing from musicians, fans, customers, guitarists, bass bangers, nerds, collectors from the hardcore pedal effects fetishists to the innocent, doe-eyed, pedal curious. To keep the conversations flowing along the Information Superhighway, we have a monthly Q&A feature called ASK EQD.
This month, we offer you a few precious questions and answers with our beloved Sales Manager, Master of Halloween Costumes, keeper of hairless cats and flatulent synthesizer sound connoisseur, Karl Vorndran. Let’s go!
@zachwhite3: How did you wind up with the job you have now? What did you do before working for EQD?
KV: Before working at EarthQuaker, I sold PA systems at a place in Canton (Ohio) called Pro Audio Video and that’s where I learned my skills. I was also a bike mechanic at Century Cycles. That’s bicycle. I realize that if I say bike mechanic most people who don’t know me, will assume motorcycles. How it all started was [EQD Founder/President Jamie Stillman's band] Relaxer played at [Karl and friends experimental D.I.Y. music venue. R.I.P.] The Cave, one show, and I said, if you ever need anyone to help solder…and, Julie [Robbins, EQD CEO] called me that following fall, and I came in and I had been building some D.I.Y. pedals and was going to business school. One other thing to note is that I started out as a circuit builder but I was in grad school, taking graduate business courses when Julie posted the first internal office position. I applied for that and Julie gave it to me and the rest is history. I was building small, D.I.Y. stuff, synthesizers, overdrive clones, like a tube screamer and a reverb and a phaser and then I built some small synthesizer stuff. I had a 6 oscillator light sensing resistor so you’d wave your hand over it and it would change the pitch of six oscillators. So, it was basically like six light -based theremins in one. Sounded chaotic, like a jet engine taking off.
@mtwittey: If you could fit all the EQD employees in a giant van for a road trip, what’s the one musician (or band) you could all agree on when making the road-trip playlist?
KV: The answer I have used for years came about when we were all working at the old shop six or so years ago. That group was a very different group of employees at that time, there was like 15-20 of us. But the first band we could agree on was CCR. People were naming bands like, ‘Oh, Misfits’ and someone would say, ‘Naah,’ then someone else would interject, ‘What about Bad Brains,’ and, “Naah, not Bad Brains,’ then someone said CCR and everyone was like..yeah!
@the_blue_haired_girl: Favorite pedal to hook up to a synth?
KV: Hands down, it’s the Terminal. It turns your everyday boring synthesizers into snarling, roaring machines. And sure, all reverbs and delays sound great on synthesizers but this particular one takes boring synthesizers and makes them awesome. I have an Ensoniq ESQ1 that sounds 80s as hell and can sound kind of cheesy, but you put it through the Terminal and it’s the heaviest, most awesome thing ever. That’s always my answer. I normally don’t think much of dirt pedals on synths, because they’re like ahh, whatever. But for some reason, the Terminal just takes smooth, clean or especially 80s synths and makes them sound gnarly as hell. Other ones, like Hoof, they sound fine. But they’re not as jagged and snarly as the Terminal and it just adds some extra grit, especially when you have a cold, digital synthesizer and you want it to not sound like some new wave shit.
@coloradomodularsynthsociety: When do we get more EQD eurorack modules?👏
KV: When you start buying more of the Afterneath Eurorack module (laughs). For a salesman manager answer, I think that’s a good one.
@jrdnwrght: What specific pedals would you string together to turn your electric bass into a phat Taurus synth?
KV: The first thing that I would probably do is Spatial Delivery and Data Corrupter. Because you got the Data Corrupter with gnarly octaves and intervals, so you can do fifths and all that classic synth stuff. And with the Spatial Delivery you get the envelope filter and that allows you to get dynamic filter sounds. I like the Avalanche Run at the end, but that’s just more to make it cool. That’s when you want to take it to the next level. Technically, it would be Data Corrupter into Spatial Delivery, so it’s filtering out all the harsh stuff, but you're getting the synth tones. So, the other thing that you might do is something like a Tone Job if you really want to dial in the frequencies. But for me, it’s the Spatial Delivery because you control the filter, the cutoff and the resonance and the depth because the depth is what’s [going to determine] how much gnarly it’s going to let through. But, you have to do the Spatial Delivery AFTER the Data Corrupter, because if you do it before it corrupts the data afterwards. With the Spatial Delivery after, you are able to filter all the corrupted data back down.
@tedayre: Hey Karl 👋 how has COVID restrictions changed your job? Hope you are well ❤️
KV: First, I’ve been working at home for a year. It has made it so that we’re mainly communicating with our team via email, phone, and Zoom meetings. I also had to train a new sales employee 100% remotely. Well, technically 99.9% because I was in the office with him for one week before this all happened. He started the first week of March (laughs). It was very crazy. All the meetings are at home and checking in on all the pedals in stock and relying more heavily on [customer management software] Salesforce to manage both orders and repair cases. It’s just different. Things take a little bit longer than before. Before, I could just walk downstairs and say ‘Hey Joe [Golden, EQD repair maven], did we get this repair?’ If I don’t happen to get them on the phone. It’s not like, hey, I know he’s in the building. So it does add a little bit of time to things.
@davetomluke: What’s the coolest idea for a mod to an EQD pedal that you’ve seen? How about this one: a 3-way switch on the 🌈 Machine to make the exp pedal control Magic or Tracking instead of Pitch.
KV: It’s the infinite feedback mod and it can be done to many pedals. You put a 3-way toggle switch that feeds the output back into the input and it makes most of the effects do really crazy stuff. I know that Ram [Youssefi, EQD shipping manager] has it done to almost every single EarthQuaker pedal he owns. He has it on the Rainbow Machine, Arpanoid, Organizer, and Spatial Delivery. Most of our modulation and reverb pedals. I think, technically you can do it on the dirt pedals, but it doesn't sound as good usually. I know personally, I have it on the Rainbow Machine. It causes crazy freakouts to happen based on whatever effect you put it on. It’s pretty uncontrollable, but it makes the coolest sounds. But, it depends on the effect. It’s just one of those things. If you want to pile on the sound, flick the switch. But, it’s on a toggle switch, which is key, because you can turn it off whenever you want. So at the end of the set you can just go make crazy noise.
@g_w1l: How do you get into the role of Sales Manager for a pedal company? It would be awesome to hear more about that side of the business.
KV: I would say that there's kind of two routes.Some people have sales and/or management experience in other fields and are hired when the position opens up. The other route is internal promotion from an entry level position. I started in production and was going to business school when our CEO, Julie Robbins, created the position (she and Jamie had previously done all sales related stuff until that point. I applied and she gave me a shot. I have been in the position for seven years now. Either route, it's about developing the right skillset. I’ll focus next on the sales aspect and then the manager aspect. The first thing is being passionate about pedals and knowing how to describe pedals, so that people want them without pushing a hard sell. That’s always been my kind of thing. I get excited about pedals and it’s not just that I’m trying to sell you on the pedal. It’s that I’m stoked about this pedal, want to explain why the pedal is awesome, and hope you get stoked too. That’s the key to being good at the pedal sales aspect of it, in my opinion. Then, the management aspect comes in with having a really good birds-eye view of how the company works and how sales fits into that structure. And then, being able to make sure that the departments are able to talk to each other and that sales efficiently communicates with production, so that they’re producing what is being sold. That’s one of the key things I’ve done, is make sure that the production team downstairs knows what’s being sold so they know what to make. I basically act as the glue for the departments. So when we have a new pedal coming out, it’s important to get the message out to all the dealers. Then I give the sales information to the production manager. Then, we come up with all the different specials and perks for all the dealers and then organize that across the year and develop a strategy on how to translate that into percentage growth. The biggest part about being a manager is being able to tie all the individual departments that you work with together, all the individual people. Our shipping person will be doing something and we need to make sure that it lines up with what the sales team is offering. If we’re out of stock on a pedal, but that’s the pedal we’re pushing for our special, then that’s a problem. So, a lot of it is coordinating stuff like that. It’s about gluing everything together and making sure that everyone is communicating and knows what’s happening. It’s really easy for departments to get out of sync, especially because our manufacturing is structured in assembly stages. Production workers only see their own part of the processes, so I have to make sure I communicate what is sold or likely to be sold, and what is needed, and in what order. I’m the bird’s-eye view, making sure that production is talking with shipping and shipping is talking with repairs and the sales team is working with production and that everything is in sync.
@wyattmzelle: Yo! Is there any overlap between the Crimson Drive and Bellows? Love my Crimson Drive.
KV: There is, in the fact that they are simpler dirt pedals that have a more vintage voice to them. But the Bellows is kind of the Neil Young [sound], blurs the line between overdrive and Fuzz where Crimson Drive is a germanium based, medium gain overdrive that just has a really great vintage-y sound.
@notahipstername: Hey guys, first of all I want to congratulate you for engaging these conversations, and of course the overall build quality of your pedals. Now the question: after the huge success of the Life Pedal, is there any other artist/band you would like to collaborate with? Cheers!
KV: Stay tuned…
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Follow @earthquakerdev on Instagram to submit questions for the next installment of ASK EQD.
Malcolm X Abram is a recovering reporter and music writer and a proud 40 year guitar noodler. He lives, works and plays in the bucolic dreamland of Akron, Ohio in an old house with two dogs who don’t really like each other and way too many spiders.