Seefeld: miracle boxes for musicians – Starnberg

At second glance, Marc Widmaier would probably pass for the youngest effect device manufacturer in Germany. Dark straight hair, boyish face, boxer nose, hardly a hint of a beard. Yes, he wears a gold wedding ring on his left hand, but you could still think that the man just graduated from high school five years ago. The fact that you don’t look at his age is actually something like the “problem of my life,” says Widmaier and tells the story of a difficult purchase: for his 30th birthday he wanted to buy a box of Radler in a penny market, but the cashier did didn’t believe that he was 18 already. She asked for his identity card, but didn’t even congratulate him in the end – he resented the woman for the latter.

Now a kind of birthday is coming up again: Because of the corona pandemic, Widmaier’s sales had “totally collapsed” because “people didn’t buy anything anymore”. Now business is picking up again, and the now 35-year-old managing director of the Seefeld company SpaceControl is planning a new start for his “ohmless pedals”. At the end of June, the first prank should come onto the market: an overdrive with a microprocessor. A fuzz, a compressor and a toolbox for the digital guitar amplifier Kemper are to follow. The simply styled floor pedals have one thing in common: they can be controlled and programmed via a so-called midi controller. For example, it is possible to choose from four different distortion modes with different dynamics. “I want to make everything a bit more flexible,” says the engineer, “not just an analog thing that you can turn on and off.” Which is to be understood as an understatement: even the old “Ohmless” fuzz, for example, has more on the box than a number of competing products and is surprisingly versatile.

Open detailed view

floor pedals? Widmaier, the only effects device producer in the Fünfseenland, is involved in a huge market. In the US alone, 1.2 million guitar and bass effects are said to have been sold in 2020. In Germany, a good dozen so-called boutique manufacturers swing their soldering irons. Because the miracle boxes with a few controls and jacks are for guitarists and bassists something like shoes for women: little happy makers. So accessories that you might not even need, but still have to have, love dearly or damn deeply and trample on if you want to turn them on. The colorful things can turn the bravest amp into a spitting and roaring monster. You add reverb and delay. Let the sound float. make it wider. Mimic the rotation of a Leslie box or compress the signal.

What’s old and shabby and sounds supposedly heavenly is devilishly expensive

Some musicians hoard hundreds of devices in their eternal search for the sound paradise and use them to equip large boards. The price range is enormous: the quite useful cheap effect from China is available for 22.40 euros. For a box with cult status like the original “Klon Centaur” you’re shelling out 5,000 euros. The vintage hype has long since had this market under control: what is old and worn and supposedly sounds heavenly is devilishly expensive.

Open detailed view

Widmaier is not one of those who hear the grass grow. It is important to him to use high-quality components in his devices. He also relies on a “clean layout of the circuit board” to capture as little noise as possible. And: His effects “should not only sound good, but also look good”. Until now, a designer from Switzerland made sure that Widmaier’s pedals stood out from the crowd: a butterfly with a faded right wing adorns his compressor. Its buffer, which tackles the sound muff, comes with a plunger on the front. And the toolbox for the Kemper, which simplifies the use of stereo effects, has a trailer as a distinctive feature, a camper. These filigree elements “are very beautiful, but also very complex to produce,” says the inventor. The new series is therefore simpler. With the distortion, Widmaier relies on elegant black and golden knobs.

Born in Heilbronn, he came to building effect devices more or less by chance and out of boredom. At the age of 14 he discovered a western guitar in his grandfather’s house, a friend taught him the first steps, and the young man soon switched to the electric guitar and a multi-effects device. He’s only had the colorful little pedals on his radar for ten years: in 2012 he visited his wife Jennifer, who was then living in Australia for some time, and met one of her friends: a guitarist who “played a giant pedalboard” with analogue pedals had. “That’s how I got the taste.” Graduate engineer Widmaier read up on the subject: “I just like to understand things and I didn’t study electrical engineering, but mechanical engineering.” He got resistors, capacitors and a breadboard and tried out the first circuits. “In the beginning it was a lot of trial and error,” he says.

The former BMW project manager likes to tinker, now he combines hobby and job

In 2013 he started with the company “Ohmless” and his pedals. The logo is simple and bold: an Omega with a lightning bolt. And Widmaier first had to discuss with the chamber of crafts whether, as a machine builder, he was even allowed to “construct small electrical circuits”. Approval on the German market, including a disposal license for cardboard boxes and registration under the Electrical and Electronic Equipment Act, is not cheap: “The running costs are 2,000 to 3,000 euros a year.” It’s easier to set up a business in the US, says Widmaier. And in contrast to Germany, where almost everyone works, there is a “really open community. Everyone helps everyone, they also share technical details.” He got marketing tips from Josh Scott, for example, the humorous YouTuber and boss of “JHS” pedals. And Joel Korte from “Chase Bliss Audio” was his contact for his midi solution.

In 2013, Widmaier was still working as a project manager at BMW in Garching. In the evening he took out the soldering station, tinkered with circuits and built distortion, buffers and compressors. But soon it “became too much for him, my wife hardly saw me anymore.” Widmaier wanted to give up his company, even though he had sold 200 to 300 pedals a year in Germany and the USA in the years before the pandemic. But when he switched to SpaceControl in the Seefeld Technology Park in 2017, company owner Bernd Gombert encouraged him to continue. “Ohmless” is now part and brand of the company that manufactures 3D sensors for controlling industrial robots and laser cutting machines. An ideal constellation for managing director Widmaier: “I can combine hobby and work”.

Open detailed view

Anyone who thinks of creative muddles when imagining the cave of a pedal builder is totally wrong with Widmaier: His workplace in the Seefeld company is more of a tidy office than a wild workshop. “I can’t work in chaos,” he says. On the shelves are tubes, transistor and digital amps, with which the young man tries out his effects. Next to it are four boxes with drawers for small parts such as potentiometers, resistors and transistors. The soldering station and plug-in circuit are on the table. Dog Henry, a Goldendoodle, is carrying a rag doll around. And on one wall are two posters with the name Jesus written four times. Once he is crossed out, which should symbolize his death. Widmaier is a devout Christian and is active in the Evangelical Free Church JCF in Munich. He leads one of the bands there and plays pop and rock at modern church services.

How did he come up with “Ohmless” in the first place? He discussed the name with a friend in the evening in Eching. The hope: Marc Widmaier’s floor pedals would prevail on the market without resistance, i.e. ohmless. It didn’t quite turn out that way. But of course, that can still happen after the restart.