Gerlt Technologies makes hundreds of customizable rack effects, at prices comparable to guitar pedals.  It's time to dump that pedal board and get Your Tone off the floor!

 

 What We Do

You know them as guitar pedals

We build them as rack effect modules you can customize to get Your Tone

Put several rack effect modules into a 3U rack enclosure

Connect power and audio on the back like guitar pedals, adding connections for remote switching

Add a remote footswitch unit to turn rack effects on and off

Add as many rack effect modules, enclosures, and third-party products as you like. Plug in your guitar and amp. Rock it! It's that simple.

 

Quick Hits:

  • Check out our GT Effects Overview to see why we do this

  • Check out our Compares To charts to see the full list of effects we offer

  • Follow the menus from Products, to Modules, to Modules By Type to get a list of our effect types.  Select any effect type to get a list of all our effects of that type.  Select any effect to get full information including pricing.

 

 

Hello Effects Fans!

It has been a while since my last update.  Our status has not changed much.  We are still unable to take new orders.  I’ve personally been off doing something completely unrelated, lots of fun, a long ways from home.  That has gone well, but is taking longer than expected.  Instead of finishing up about now, it appears I won’t finish before late Spring or early Summer.  Our status won’t change before then.

Parts availability and cost were primary causes of our current shutdown.  We use around 6500 different vintage and current production parts to build our rack effects.  It has been difficult to find good vintage parts for a while now, and it gets a little more difficult each year - nothing new about that.  Counterfeit and reject parts flood the market, and prices have soared as caches of legit parts dwindle.  The good news is that vintage parts are often not needed to get great-sounding effects.  Usually there are newer parts that will work as well or better if you can get past the volumes of misinformation and hype out there.  Listen with your ears, not your eyes!

Lack of current production parts forced us to stop taking orders.  Some critical parts do seem to be available again, at an increased price.  We want our rack effects to be affordable, and increased part prices are not helping with that.  For example, one part we use in nearly all of our modules, sometimes several per module, went from about 80 cents to around $5+ each.  Really?!?!  Fakes are also flooding the new parts market to fill the demand of the unwary.  However, a few parts are trending down in price.  In these cases there were too many manufacturers, and none of them were getting enough market share to make larger quantities to help reduce their costs.  Some have gone out of business, leading to consolidation and lower production costs.  We’ll take a cost reduction (and pass it along) anytime we can get one!  I’ll have to sort through our hundreds of effects and countless options to determine any impacts to our pricing.  My goal is to remain comparable to pedal prices.  Or better!

Where does that leave us?  The situation has improved, but we still cannot take new orders.  I’m going to work to finish up my side adventure.  I’ll pop up again, probably around June or July, and see how things are looking and provide another update.  

Best wishes for 2023 !!!

Bill Gerlt

President, Gerlt Technologies

Dallas, Texas

28 January, 2023

 

New Module: Super Drive

Published: 22 February 2021 22 February 2021

 

   

Hello, Effects Fans!

Today we announce our new Super Drive module.  You may have missed the Boss Dual Overdrive SD-2 pedal of the early 90's.  It was only made for a few years, and didn't really catch on with the majority of players.  The pedal is basically two completely separate effects in a single enclosure.  There is an overdrive/crunch channel and a distortion/gain channel.  They each have their own Drive, Tone, and Volume controls, and you could switch between the two channels. 

Back in those days, Boss had great OD and distortion pedals, as did Ibanez/Maxon, and lots of others.  Players had plenty of good choices.  Perhaps that is why the SD-2 didn't really catch on.  It seems a good portion of players thought the OD channel in the SD-2 was nothing special, perhaps compared to other widely-available pedals.  But the Distortion channel rocks.  Many feel it is the very best of the Boss pedals for lead, also comparing favorably to lead pedals from other manufacturers.  Since switching between OD and Distortion on the fly required you to either turn a switch or buy a second remote control/switching pedal from Boss, it wasn't convenient to use both channels, which may have also contributed to its small fanbase.  

However, many players still like the OD and many of those that have tried the lead/distortion circuit love it.  Here at GT, we love this module. Both the Crunch and Gain channels are great.  The Crunch channel goes from a slight boost to a nice solid tube-like crunch.  The Gain channel goes from a light crunch up to a feedback monster high-gain tube distortion, particularly with the Extra Gain option.  The tone is thick and crunchy, but remains nicely articulate with good note definition.  The Tone controls cut more highs when the Tone is turned down than they cut lows when the Tone is turned up, making it more focused on the lows.  You'll get a little noise with the Crunch/Gain and Volume up, but you don't notice it when you're playing.  We think it's best to ignore the labels of "overdrive" or "distortion", and just approach it as a couple of different "drive" effects.  Let what your ears be your guide, but don't forget those Tone knobs.  Anyway, it's a "super drive", and we really dig both channels.  The more we play, the more we smile.

We offer two configurations of the SuperDrive.  The first is the SuperDrive 2.  This configuration includes both the OD/Crunch and Gain/Lead channels.  In addition to the standard on/off footswitch, we've added a second footswitch for switching between the two channels, making it easier to use than the original.  The second configuration is the SuperDrive Lead.  This configuration drops the OD channel and second footswitch, leaving you with what may be the best Lead/Distortion effect Boss ever produced.  It is also priced a bit lower and takes up less space in your enclosure.

We have made a few part substitutions in the circuit.  The original pedal used some cheap, "nothing special" op amps, transistors, and clipping diodes.  We have changed those out to better components.  Perhaps that contributes to why we like this circuit so much.  The advantage of these parts is that they cause less noise, a Good Thing in OD and Distortion circuits.  Plus, authentic non-counterfeit ones are available at lower cost, a Good Thing in all circuits!

We do offer some options for the circuit.  Feel free to choose a different op amp, perhaps one with even less noise than the 4559P we use by default.  The lead section of the circuit is pretty complex for a distortion circuit.  Counting input and output, it has 7 active stages.  Many distortion circuits have 1 or 2, maybe up to 4 or even 5.  It also has both hard and soft clipping.  As a result we don't really recommend changing it up too much.  Op amp swap, no problem.  Maybe some clipping diode options, if you really know the circuit and have a specific change in mind.  Otherwise, we recommend you save your customization budget for other modules.

You can see the details about our SuperDrive module at: SuperDrive.  Or look for it in the Distortion Modules section under Products -> Modules -> Modules By Type.