The Goo 1
Interview JOHN BRERETON BEHIND THE SCENES CIAN ‘M
OOSE’ MEGANNETY From the crashing chorus of Fontaines D.C ‘Boys In The Better Land’ to Pillow Queen’s intense, broody opening chords on ‘Liffey’ chances are that those guitars went through a PCB (printed circuit board) designed by Cian Megannety. A well known musician and gig rep, Moose is also a wizard of the soldering iron, creating some of our best known musicians effects pedals courtesy of his Moose Electronics brand. He started out recreating classic effects and pretty soon was tinkering with the circuits to get much more out of them. The current production run is a summation of a decade’s learning and discovery and is a testament to his immense musical knowledge and to a wonderful local collective approach from design to build. We caught up with Moose at work in his workshop in Portobello. How did you get into creating pedals? After years of fixing my own cables, guitars etc. I was living back home in Letterkenny with some extra time on my hands so I bought some pedal kits to try my hand at a couple circuits. They worked out and I started tweaking to see what more I could get out of them. Some friends were also into what I’d built so I built some and kept going from there. I’m always trying to improve things by getting my own slant on the sounds. What’s the process involved in creating and making a pedal? Sometimes it starts with a tone goal in mind or other (and probably more often) it’s a frustration with what’s available. Like here’s an old pedal that sounds cool but has way more potential in my mind. Either process starts with breaking the effect down into blocks. Will a block I already have work here? Can it work better with some tweaks? Has this already been done? Can I do it better or be something worthwhile with it? Then it’s lots and lots of tweaking and listening and more listening. Bit of maths too for checking frequency responses. Following the prototype phase it’s time to get PCB’s done which my mate Nick helps me on. Once the pedal is done it’s time for a name and then I meet up with my graphic designer and long time buddy Ror Conaty, explain the concept with name and sound and let him at the design side. He knows me well enough that I can usually trust him to nail it the first time but the very odd time there may be a revision. I hand solder and wire all the pedals myself along with painting the cases and screen printing the graphics. Can you remember the time you first heard distortion on a record? Gotta be my dad, Fergal, blasting Sabbath on PAGE 32 PICS: BILLY CAHILL