Wet. Like, really, really wet.
The Thumptopus is a concept I drew up for Jackson Steinwall. For some context, Jackson Steinwall is a pretty important figure in the corner of Toronto’s music scene I tend to find myself in. He’s constantly organizing, promoting and running all sorts of musical events across the city. Outside of that, he carries a passion for music that I believe can only be described as ‘absolute’. So naturally, he’s also a wild musician. I’ve seen him play just about every instrument out there. However, the one he tends to gravitate towards the bass.
I frequent a lot of Jackson’s events and had numerous conversations with him about building him a pedal. He has fingers in so many different musical genres and interests, I felt like this could be a challenging task to try and narrow-in on something useful. However, after a few discussions we landed on‘the perfect idea’.
One of Jackson’s multiple musical projects is something known as the Squid Party. Squid parties are a riot. At it’s core, it’s a beautifully inspired improv funk jam famous for a fun time – and appropriately themed headwear. I highly recommend checking out a show if anyone happens to catch wind of one.
The theme also makes its way into a lot of the sound within the music. With Jackson on bass, he practically has a duty as part of the party of squids to bring bass tones that can only be described as ‘thick and gloopy’. Thus, the Thumptopus was conceptualized.
The Thumptopus is a beefy [fishy?] envelope filter with a few additional bells and whistles to allow for ‘maximum gloop’. It started as a Mu Tron filter, that I then added some additional utilities to. In the end, this physically huge pedal turned out to be the perfect nautically-themed addition to the Squid Party sound.
Pedal Features:
– Input Signal Control (Controls Input Signal Strength for Optimal Effect)
– Peak Control (Controls the Intensity of the Effect)
– Sweep Control (Tunes the Shape of the Envelope)
– Output Control (Acts as a Master Volume for the Wet Signal)
– Blend Control (Allows a Wet/Dry Blend)
– Cephalopod Control (Low Pass EQ, Band Pass EQ, High Pass EQ)
– Byoo/Bwah (Envelope Inversion Toggle)
– Less/More (Range Toggle)
– Hybrid Latching/Momentary Footswitch
