WHO IS THIS - EMPTY HEAD?

Hi! I am Nic and I build pedals as Empty Head Effects here in Mainz, Germany (49.9929 N, 8,2473 E). Originally from England, I am a husband, a father, a musician and a pedal building fanatic.

Empty Head Effects was founded in 2023 and handmakes unique pedals inspired by images, concepts or stories to help inspire musicians from noise artists to touring professionals at rehearsals, recording studios & live on stage.

Like many big changes for individuals recently, Empty Head Effects was born out of the pandemic. It brought about a collapse of my previous career, a wedding, the birth of our child, my band TV Priest signing to Sub Pop, the release of two records, a name change and our family’s migration to Germany. In the lead up to this move I started to study circuits, electronics and more importantly started to learn entirely new things once more and fell in love with the process of learning. Since then it’s been my passion, developing ideas and then designing pedals to hopefully inspire myself and others to further explore and ‘play’ with sounds and music.

Behind each of the pedals is a story to discover - Falling Man falls from the sky, but where from and where to? The External / Internal struggles with what they as a human present externally versus what they experience on the inside. The pedals come from an emotion, a filmic idea, an image, a production technique used on a synth in a classic 90’s dance track… The concept could come from anywhere, but what is important is only to capture the essence of that and create a full fledged sonic exploration device that people can be inspired by, explore deep into and ultimately get out there and create music and sounds with,

Each model has it’s own unique colour and knob design that is conceptualised and 3D printed in house. They are all designed, built, drilled, powder coated, laser engraved, hand wired, 3D printed and finished by hand myself ready to be explored and discovered by you.

I love making music and coming up with new designs and sounds in the form of my beautifully convoluted and unnecessarily perplexing pedals. I hope you can find some love for them too.

Big.big.love

Nic

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