Rainger FX was founded by David Rainger, an engineer, guitarist and journalist known for writing about the technical side of electric instruments. The company he founded makes and sells electronic add-ons for those working with electric guitars, mainly effects pedals.
David got in touch with us because he needed a partner for a new fuzz distortion pedal he wanted to offer – the Dr. Freakenstein Fuzz. You certainly know you’re not working in a boring sector when you’re working with David and his products! We couldn’t say no to being part of Dr. Freakenstein.
David is an experienced engineer and had completed much of the design already. The job did involve some finalising of the design, but primarily, our role was manufacture of the initial production run, not just of the circuit board, but the industrial design of the whole unit.
It’s fair to say this was one of the trickier manufacturing jobs we’ve worked on. David’s design involved a mix of digital and analogue components. His layout also used a more traditional technique known as the “through-hole” mounting scheme. With this approach, electrical connections are made by drilling holes through the PCB (printed circuit board), and carefully threading a lead wire through every hole, so that it can be soldered onto a location on the other side. Back in the day, every PCB was made like that, but nowadays it’s pretty much all surface mount, an approach that makes manufacturing a lot easier.
David didn’t want to move to the more modern approach, and, even though it made manufacture more challenging, we understood why: he’d got his design sounding just right, and he didn’t want anything to change. Also, his is a particular target market, and they know what they like.
It’s fair to say this was one of the trickier manufacturing jobs we’ve worked on. David’s design involved a mix of digital and analogue components. His layout also used a more traditional technique known as the “through-hole” mounting scheme. With this approach, electrical connections are made by drilling holes through the PCB (printed circuit board), and carefully threading a lead wire through every hole, so that it can be soldered onto a location on the other side. Back in the day, every PCB was made like that, but nowadays it’s pretty much all surface mount, an approach that makes manufacturing a lot easier.
The result was a production run of effects pedals that did everything David needed them to do.
“AdvaNova Consultancy were very friendly and accessible. They came up with a good quote very quickly and turned the job around extremely quickly – I’m very impressed.”
Feedback from the client indicate that the product has been a great success – it certainly debuted to a slew of positive reviews. “The brilliant and inspired Dr Freakenstein Fuzz is a dream device”, was the verdict of premierguitar.com. Our customer was very happy, and we’re very happy to have helped bring Dr. Freakenstein into the world!
Whether your electronics needs involve design, manufacture, testing or layout, we stand ready to help. Our skillset also covers industrial design and programming, especially of embedded systems. Please get in touch if you would like to discuss any project.
