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: OverBoost

Published: 17 March 2022 17 March 2022

 

   

Hello, Effects Fans!

Today we announce our new OverBoost module.  It compares to a family of boost pedals from Xotic Pedals.  The OverBoost comes in 8 different base configs that compare to the Xotic BB Preamp (current model), Xotic BB Pream AT (Andy Timmon, original models), Xotic BB Preamp Bass, Xotic BB Preamp MB (Mids Boost Custom Shop model), Xotic BB Preamp Comp (Compression Custom Shop model), Xotic AC Booster, Xotic RC Booster, and Xotic RC Booster Bass.

The RC, AC, and BB configurations cover a range of clean to dirty boosts.  The RC or "really clean" covers the space from clean to gritty to mild overdrive.  The AC starts at an "almost clean" level and goes up to crunchy overdrive.  The BB, aiming for the range of a Marshal Bluesbreaker amp, covers the range from cleanish/gritty to full overdrive.  Most guitar and bass players have probably had the opportunity to try at least one of the pedals in this family.  They are great boosts at reasonable prices.  Where they really shine is in giving you fine control over how much you push the front end of your amp, especially if you have a tube amp.  Depending on which you choose and how you dial in the Volume and Gain, you can get a nice, fat clean boost that gives you "more of what you've got", or you can push your amp into varying levels of break up, or shove your amp over the edge into heavy, chunky overdrive or distortion.

The circuit is similar to its tone-cousin, the Ibanez Tubescreamer.  But it has some important differences.  The BB replaces the Tubescreamer Tone control with a fixed resistor, adding a new tone stack after it that gives you great Bass and Treble controls.  These two controls also allow you better control over your mids.  The MB version puts a Mids control back into the Tubescreamer-like tone stack in place of the fixed resistor, in addition to providing the additional Bass and Treble controls.  Different types of clipping between the original/AT version and the current version yield similar but slightly different gain levels, sometimes described as different levels of compression.  The AC and RC versions leave out the old Tubescreamer tone stack completely, replacing it with the new Bass/Treble tone stack.  The AC and RC versions also differ in clipping configurations to yield cleaner base tones than the BB configuration, with the RC configuration being the cleanest of the three.

The new tone stack is important to dialing in that level of clean to dirty boost that you want.  At different levels of dirt, you will likely need to adjust different frequencies to get the tone balance you want.  A single Tone control may not be sufficient for that level of fine-tuning.  The Bass/Treble tone stack in this circuit should do the trick, especially if you opt for a configuration that includes the Mid Boost control.  An optional second channel will let you switch between two different Gain settings.

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