Stephenson FMD

Fix My Duck Pedal (FMD) built by Mark Stephenson in Canada. hand painted by his daughter with loving care and built with precision with an ear for tone. It runs on a 9 volt battery, and has a Boss style adapter built in. As far as ease of use goes, I am glad it came with a couple of pages of short notes with suggested settings as a starting point for further experimentation. Once you set the dials and switches where with the recommended settings, the FMD can be fine tuned to your liking. I find this pedal versatile for both humbucking and single coils pickups; Strats, Telecasters, and Gibsons alike.

I got good sounds out of it for both humbucking and single coil pickups. For instance, Mark has a suggested setting to fatten up single coils, another to add clarity to humbucking style pickups, a clean boost and all out fuzz mayhem treble boost style. All the settings sound good to my ears and it is clear to me that Mark and I are on the same page as far as tone goes. The only sounds that were not up to par for me were the Rangemaster style settings. They did not seem to get the same vocal quality I get from my Analogman Beano boost. I also recoreded using this pedal using a Boss BR 1600 and it sat in nicely on the tracks and perhaps made me sound a little better than I am.

The manual, if you can call it that is a type written, informal two pages of notes. They do the job, are simple and to the point. It is spartan but adequate in terms of information. As mentioned earlier, the directions give good strating points for further fine tuning.

I don't know of any artists using this pedal (thank god) and I can get a variety of very nice sounds while engaged. We play blues based rock, a little jazz and rock from the 60's and 70's, modern garage-band sounding tunes. My (two) favorite set ups are a Siegmund Midnight Special-1x12 and a Marshall 20 watt Lead and Bass head with a 1x12 ported cab. The FMD pedal matches up very well with both amps using my favorite Stratocaster.

I A/B'd this pedal with my studio arsenal and I was overwhelmed by how many pedals sounded pale in comparison. It literally kicked out 3 of my stalwart pedals causing me to rethink how much money I have thrown out the door on hype. This pedal cost me far less than anything I have bought to date and it is the best money I have ever spent. The only pedal the FMD did not get up to was my Rangemaster pedals from Analogman and Keeley. It did hang with them quite well though. I give it high marks for versatility alone. As Mark told me in a phone conversation..."pedals are so easy to build it is criminal how much people are charging for them..."

The FMD pedal was not noisy with all the amps I tried it with. They are a '72 Fender Deluxe Reverb. A Fender PRinceton, A siegmund Midnight Special, and a Marshall Lead and Bass. The guitars used were a Fender Strat, an Anderson hollw T classic, a Metropolitan Tanglewood, and a parts buitl tele with CC blade pickups. It matched up well with all, and took a bit of adjustmenting when changing from guitar to guitar.

The pedal is built as well as any other employing an MXR style box, mostly in grey. The hand painted job gives it a rustic quality that looks like it may come off after heavy use, but you do not play the paint job and this is no problem for me.

I took the pedal apart, looked at the insides and it looks fine. Mark taped the board up so it would not short out and hand signed it. The lay out is a little awkward for me with the two switches coming out of the either side of the box. When I do need to change it up I have to look bend around to get a look at the switches to see what is what. This is not a big problem for me as I usually set it and forget it. I lent it out to a friend to use in a live setting and it held out fine for a three set night. Two months of rigorous use has not affected this pedal in any adverse way at all.

I would not gig without a backup for reasons of reliability though; the FMD is reliable, they are simply inexpensive so I can afford two no problem. I have also talked to Mark about building a duplex FMD with switches on top and am now waiting for this. I am sold on his concepts here.

I have never had to deal with Stephenson amps on any issues other than talking about what things can do. I am confident that Mark will stand behind any issues and take care of you.

I am going to leave this blank for this reason alone as I have not had to deal with Mark for repairs. I will add that he is friendly, returns e-mail in a timely manner, and will spend the time talking to you on the phone to resolve issues and talk 'shop'.

I do not like it when people give a mark of '10' when all they have ever done is talk BEFORE the sale. I have had people promise me the world in this situation only to be let down AFTER the sale. One example is Visual Sound; I tried the Jekyl and Hyde pedal, had issues and got a tough luck response when there was a problem and this is only one example.

There are literally thousands of distortion/od/boost units to choose from today; both new and old. None of us will hear half of them. Some old pedals like the Tube Screamer, Vox Tone Bender, The Big Muff and Rangmaster are essential pedals to any collection. Modern boutique pedals offer improved versions of the timeless classics, or complete creative departures from the past. The FMD pedal incorporates elements of three classics with very usable settings for chord work or single note leads.

For me what the FMD pedal does best is adds considerable thickness to single coils and adds nice clarity to the neck pickup in humbucker equipped guitars. If heavy distortion is your thing, the FMD will add a tremendous amount of thick distortion and sustain while preserving and pushing all the frequencies present when playing straight into the amp with no effects on.

At moderate settings on the FMD you can dial in the right amount of treble, thickness and gain to suit your needs depending on your rig. Harmonic feedback from chords can be produced to further manipulate the sound coming out of your rig.

The only draw back for me was the layout with the two switches on the side. My worries were; having one of the switches get dinged or bumped and changed. I cannot recall having such a versatile pedal in my aresenal that can be set to explode with sound. At the price, it is one of the best kept inexpensive secrets out there. I do not imagine it will remain this way for long. Once more people try this pedal I can imagine them selling like hotcakes and the price rising accordingly. For Mark I hope he does well with it, for me, I am secretly hoping for this pedal to remain somewhat obscure.

I do not give out high marks normally for these ratings nor do I submit ratings often. The FMD rates up with the best of them and I am looking forward to more products out of the shop of Stepehson amps!

Very intuition and simple.....

This baby is KILLER! It has a treble boost, flat clean boost, and a full boost, a thick toggle, and another for added bass for modern tone. The level and gain work interactively. This 110 USD wonder RIVALS my 360 USD point to point George Lynch Time Machine boost (only 38 in the world in this ltd run), SO that says VOLUMES! Of course my vintage Plexi Marshall or my Stage Hog just sings modern or vintage tones with a kinda of vintage bloom to the strings! NICE!

A tank, like all of Mark's stuff

Mark is first class handles his customers the same way -very nice to deal with!

nuff said! I can't wait to buy Mark's 30 watt head!