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 Configuration: Teledrive20

Published: 25 April 2022 25 April 2022

 

 

Hello, Effects Fans!

We're getting near the end of a large set of new module announcements that we promised several weeks ago.  Today we announce our Teledrive20, which is a new configuration of our Teledrive module.  The Teledrive compares to the Nobels ODR-1 and the Teledrive20 compares to the Nordland ORD-C Custom Overdrive pedal.  They provide transparent boost to mild overdrive, similar in function (but not design) to other transparent overdrives such as the Klon Centaur or Maxon GT 820.  They are probably at their best pushing a tube amp into breakup. 

The original designer of the Nobels ODR-1 pedal, Kai Tachibana, released an updated version of the Nobels ODR-1 as the Nordland ODR-C Custom Overdrive in 2020.  There were actually a couple of minor variations on it with slightly different model numbers in 2021, but we'll focus on the ODR-C.  The Nordland ODR-C was designed to retain the sound of the Nobels ODR-1, with a few tweaks.  Our Teledrive20 compares to the Nordland ODR-C.  Many of the differences between the two are in components and technical adjustments that are not audible.  But there are some changes.  A Lo Cut control was added, just like the popular mod for the ODR-1, so the bass can be trimmed.  Setting it to not trim the bass gives you the original ODR-1 tone.  A Mids control was also added.  It does almost the opposite of what the ODR-1 Spectrum control does.  Instead of raising or cutting both the highs and lows at the same time, leaving the mids alone, it leaves the highs and lows alone and either raises or lowers the mids.  Spectrum and Mids thus accomplish sort of the same thing in different ways, giving you either a mids boost or mids scoop.  If you leave the Mids control in the middle position, it gives you the same sound as the ODR-1.

A third new control is the Decompression control.  It adjusts the soft clipping.  At one extreme, it gives you the same clipping as the ODR-1.  But as you adjust it, it blends in some additional soft clipping diodes.  Normally that would have a pronounced effect on the volume and the character of the distortion.  But you don't get that.  The soft clipping occurs before the hard clipping in the circuit.  Causing the soft clipping voltage to increase doesn't make a noticeable difference because the hard clipping is still clipping at the same lower voltage.  The manual for the pedal says this control provides a more open sound (less compressed), but notes that the effect is subtle unless the Drive level is high.  We struggle to hear any difference at all adjusting this control, no matter how all the other controls are set.  Perhaps something about our test guitar(s) and amp(s) are masking this control.  It may be more audible with a different setup.   We do provide an option for different/switchable hard and soft clipping configurations.  The Decompression control should be more noticeable with LEDs used in the hard clipping.  But that also changes the character of the circuit. 

The new features make the circuit just different enough that we decided to create a new board instead of jamming the new features into our old board.  As a result, we now have two configurations for the Teledrive.  The Teledrive configuration is the original Nobels ODR-1 circuit and you can still select any of our options for it.  By default it has Drive, Spectrum, and Level controls.  The Teledrive20 configuration uses the updated Nordland ODR-C circuit.  Most of the Teledrive options are available for this configuration, except for the Bass Cut option which is standard in the Teledrive20.  By default it will have Drive, Spectrum, Level, Lo/Bass Cut, Decomp, and Mids controls.  We also offer an option that gives you the Nobels ODR-1 "Plus" version.  We recommend the Lo Cut control to allow you to knock off some of the bass.  We're neutral on the Mids control, but it might be nice for small mids tweaks once you have Spectrum where you want it.  The Decompression control doesn't do much of anything for us, but YMMV.  If you've tried and liked the ODR-1 Plus version, then you may want that boost switch.  Overall, though, the original pedal with the Lo Cut option is our preferred configuration.  With four controls, it will fit into a 1.5" module, where the Teledrive20 requires 2".

You can see more details about our Teledrive and Teledrive20 module configurations at: Teledrive.  Or look for it in the Overdrive Modules section under Products -> Modules -> Modules By Type.