Made from exceptional-quality Australian timber, roots music giants like Michael Franti and Harry Manx have been using the Byron Bay-made BIGFOOT stompboxes for years. GEARED chats to designer/manufacturer PETER WOOLNOUGH.

GEARED: How did you come up with the Bigfoot idea?

PETER WOOLNOUGH: Having worked in the music business, I had – until very recently – a few people coming into Byron Music and asking how they can build a stompbox. I gave them a few ideas and then I thought, “I’ve have a go at it” and in about 2001, my very early version came out.

G: You’ve also designed the pickup system for the Bigfoot range.

PW: The first ones – from about 2005 – were called Wolftone and they were a very different stompbox: they had a piezo pickup and a preamp. They were active – the new ones are passive. And then there was an electric guitar pedal in the US called Wolftone, so I had to change the name to Bigfoot, which I had in the back of my mind for quite a while. I also re-did the pickup system and it lasted for another couple of years until I developed the Monster Pickup system, which is passive. I had Lloyd Baggs [of LR Baggs acoustic pickups] make me custom preamps for those ones for about two or three years – I met his at NAMM in the US and he was very kind to make me very small ones – for the later Wolftones and the early Bigfoots. Then I developed my own system, because the early one was incredibly time-consuming; even though it’s not the greatest sound in the world, people are still using them.

G: Still footstompin’...

PW: I was in search of the ultimate bass tone, so I embarked on my own research and development and I think I’ve finished refining my system – but it’s always work-in-progress. Around mid-2006 or 2007, I introduced the Little Monster.

G: Does timber play a part in the box’s resonance?

PW: I’ve used all salvaged timbers and I’ve spent a long, long time – thousands of hours – on the pickup system to get it right. I’m a bit of a perfectionist and the wood that I use is often quite old and quite beautiful, but to be honest, the wood doesn’t make a whole lot of difference. Different types of wood make some difference for the tone, but not a whole lot – the hard wood reacts to the way you tap it, much like the drum or the acoustic guitar. And no matter in which circumstance it is used – on the carpet or on the concrete floor – it still produces a really good sound. When I was designing the pickup system, I worked towards the wood not making a whole lot of difference.

G: On average, how long does it take you to build a stompbox?

PW: The truth is, I pay myself for two hours but it takes longer than that. I do everything myself, make the pickups myself, get my wood from [woodworker] Stan Ceglinski in Billinudgel... from that, it takes about three hours, but it obviously takes a lot longer than that due to the process of drying and waiting and things like that.

G: The Mammoth is the biggest stompbox in the range – how did you come across that concept?

PW: It came from the fact that I’ve been a solo performer for many years – I ran an open-mic night down here at The Bangalow Hotel every Tuesday for twelve years – and when I play, I’m pretty much a left-foot tapper, but I would tap my left foot and then I would tap my right foot. Being a singer and a guitar player, I found it was a lot easier to get a syncopated beat using two feet rather than one. When tapped with the left and the right foot, the same piece of timber will sound slightly different. That’s where the Mammoth came from – I’ve been trying to get more than just that. One of the biggest criticisms people have of the stompboxes is that they’re doing that constant ‘thump-thump-thump’ on the regular beat, which reduces the ability for people who use two feet to get some ordinate pattern happening. I started to sell quite a few to drummers – not just solo musicians, which is where the market was originally aimed at, but actual drummers who don’t want to take a big kit to a small gig or want to use them for the kick drum. I also started to get requests from people who use two feet as well, so that’s pretty much where it came from.

Lovingly handcrafted by PETER WOOLNOUGH The current BIGFOOT range includes the Little Monster, Yowie, Skeleton, Silverback and Mammoth models. For more info/pricing on the Bigfoot Stompboxes check out www.bigfootstompbox.com

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