Benrod Electro and... Steve Lukather!

It all started at the beginning of the year 2011 when Rod (BENROD) met Steve Lukather’s Guitar-tech.  A mutual respect and consideration of each other’s work led to a great working relationship.

One evening, Jim Steve’s guitar-tech sent a text-message to Rod saying: “Steve has received the gear for the upcoming tour, but there’s room for improvement. He needs something that is true to his sound, would you like to work on his gear?” Excited by the idea, the guitar-hero and the upcoming challenge, Rod answered “YES.”

The idea was to initially work on a vibe/tremolo pedal that would bring together all the advantages of the different vibe and tremolo Pedals Steve has tried, but without all the inconveniences and in a compact format for his pedalboard in his upcoming tours both solo and with Toto. After various prototypes, tests, tweaks, removal of switches, adding of other controls etc. the final prototype is ready.

We are proud to have achieved, thanks to the perfectionism and talent of Steve, the creation of such a polished pedal, which sounds great and has a huge range of tones on tap. Task accomplished, the Wave box is on Luke’s pedalboard for his European tour solo and with Toto as this press release is published.

The WAVE BOX will be available at all BENROD dealers in France at the end of June/beginning of July, and in the US and Canada during the first half of July.

Another Project being developed at the same time on demand from Steve is the switching and routing system on his pedalboard.

BENROD’s Mission: For it to be entirely analog, transparent tone-wise and “true-bypass” and for there to be no programming. The system created on time for his tour and now constitutes the key-part of his pedalboard. It allows him to articulate all his effects through the form of presets in an ultra-simple way and to switch from one preset to another with minimum effort.

This system will be available at the end of the year 2011.

Other projects are on the way. We cannot say anymore for the moment apart from that one of them should be on the market and available through BENROD by the end of 2011/beginning of 2012. This project is the pedalboard Steve Lukather requested from his guitar-tech Jim. The concept: simple, light-weight, heavy-duty (heavy gigging obliges), good-looking and easy to use.

Seeing how passionate Jim and Rod are, it naturally came to mind that BENROD would relay the distribution and production of this pedalboard. The first prototypes are being used by Steve Lukather, as well as Aymeric Silvert and… Sebastien Chouard (French famous guitarists) a close friend of Jim and Rod and a user of Benrod Pedals.

We shall keep you up to date with these projects as they develop...