Railhead Effects / The Io Super-Distortion / Effect
Details
Welcome to io, where your super-distortion hunt finally ends. Packed with high-gain transistors and meticulously hand-picked components, the io is one of the fattest, heaviest, most gut-churning, Marshall-on-steroids dirt boxes around.
Three simple controls let you unleash the grit: Volume, Tone, and Gain. The Volume control does just what you'd expect. The Tone control works as a roll off, so turning it counter-clockwise will roll off high frequencies and keep the low frequencies intact ("adding" bass), and turning it clockwise will roll of low frequencies and maintain highs ("adding" treble). This type of control keeps the original input signal intact, just as your guitar sent it, so the circuit adds no coloration. The Gain control lets you set just how distorted you want your sound to be.
The io Super-Distortion comes in two flavors: Etched and Hand-Painted. The etched finish is hand sanded and polished, and sports metallic red paint in the recesses. The painted version begins with a coat of metallic red paint — then, each pedal is hand distressed, burned, and charred to taste so that no two are alike. When you get yours, be sure to take a nice, long, up-close look at all the detail.
As with all my effects, only the finest quality parts are used: cast aluminum shells, Switchcraft jacks, individually selected transistors, carbon resistors, high-end capacitors, and personally designed plate-through PCBs. The io is true bypass, sports heavy-gauge wiring, a 9-volt center pin negative (BOSS style) DC jack, and an internal battery clip. Current draw is approximately 3mA. Made by hand, one at a time, here in the USA.
$150.00,- / Approx. €115.00,-
RailHead Effects, USA 
Here's your chance to get the scoop about how RAILhead Effects started, and who, exactly, makes these neat little boxes of noise.
Origins
I like to say that RAILhead Effects was born out of necessity. Yeah, I know that's kind of cliché — but it's true.
Ages ago, I decided to setup my pedalboard so that I could easily swap between playing electric through my miked Goodsell Super 17, or playing my acoustic directly into the FOH board. Since I wanted to run both guitar types through all my effects, a simple A/B switch was the answer — so I bought the lowest priced, name brand switch I could find. My initial goofing around let me know the little guy worked great, so I strapped it on my board and headed out the door to play.
Once I started using it in a live setting, though, I realized it had a fatal flaw (in my opinion): no LEDs to indicate which channel was being used.
Since I've always been a tinkerer, I decided I'd modify the investment and drop-in some LEDs as opposed to buying a whole new switch. When I set out to do this, though, I also realized the pedal's jacks weren't in the prime spots as far as fitting perfectly onto my board.
The answer? You guessed it: I decided to build my own. I sourced out the parts, played with different layouts, monkeyed with various configurations, and finally settled on a final layout design. At this point, I had the perfect A/B switch for my needs — but it was ugly. Thankfully, my wife just so happens to be a painter, so I handed over the blank shell and she performed her paintlery magic upon it.
And thus our flagship pedal, the Switcha Rooski, was born.
Personnel
RAILhead Effects' massive operation is managed by a whopping two people: me and my wife.
In all seriousness, though, it's just the two of us. I come up with the effects I want to build and take care of all the "electronic stuff" — my wife takes the blank shells and makes them pretty. Sometimes I have a distinct idea for what I want as far as graphics and art go, and other times, I just let her do whatever comes natural.
I've been playing the guitar since 1985, and I've always been fascinated with analog technology. Since I love working with my hands (especially detail work), it was only a matter of time before my love of music fell into sync with my love for electronics.
My wife also plays the guitar — but the viola was her first musical love. She's also painted all her life, drawing loads of inspiration from her late Grandmother, who was always a marvel with canvas and oil.
My wife and I met in college because we were both in bands: I was in a heavy rock band named Free Association, and she was in a girl band named The Blue Sugars. It didn't take our band very long to figure out we'd have a better turn-out if The Blue Sugars opened for us (and we eventually got smarter and realized it was better to let them be the half-time show, thus ensuring an even larger audience), so we started hanging around one another a lot during our practices. Eventually, our drummer and I started playing in their band, and things progressed from there (read: she just couldn't resist my total coolness so she set about to woo me).
The rest, as they say, is history.
