Ten Minutes with Officially Licensed Circuits

Part of the ongoing "ten minutes" series of interviews with interesting people in the guitar audio community.

Back in the early summer, a new company came on to DIY scene: Officially Licensed Circuits. After ordering and building the OLC Thunderchief kit, I struck up an email conversation with Mark, the brains and good looks behind the organization. Over the months, we have spent a lot of time chatting about building and designing stompboxes. Mark is very intelligent and fun guy. So it seemed that he would be the ideal first victim for the Beavis “Ten Minutes with…” series. So off we go:

Beavis: With the launch of Officially Licensed Circuits, you've introduced a line of interesting kits to the DIY community. How did you decide to produce kits instead of finished pedals?

Mark: It was an odd turn of events. OLC went in two different directions before settling on kits. I've been blessed with friends in some high places and didn't have to spend much time to get accounts with distributors and manufacturers, so I was already a dealer of sorts. I was quietly supplying a few, select people with parts at a fraction of their usual cost - mostly as a favor to those who were contributing a lot to the DIY community, and the rest to support my own habit. I started receiving encouragement - cattle-prodding at times - to open up an on-line shop. I had little interest in doing that, but I was sitting on a lot of parts that I had overstocked when supplying others. By this time, I also had a design that was ready to go as a pedal - the Eclipse Valve. One day I was staring at a small stack of empty Eclipse Valve enclosures I had made in my garage, and a large pile of parts sitting next to it. Like the old Reese's commercials in which the chocolate accidentally falls into the peanut butter, it hit me to sell kits instead.

Beavis: A number of your kits are based on circuits from runoffgroove.com. I always think of those guys as white lab coat geniuses. How is it working with them?

Mark: I owe everything to those guys. They are the geniuses behind OLC and there are a few of them, too. Humble, intelligent, and very generous. I can't mention one without mentioning them all, so I'll leave it at this: OLC would not exist without the runoffgroove.com team.

Beavis: I've been fascinated by the Eclipse Valve as an all-tube boost pedal. Most manufacturers seem content to wrap a wad of solid-state components around a 12AX7. You chose a more difficult route. Tell me about the genesis and design of this kit.

Mark: I've had a fascination with tubes for years. There's something sexy and more substantial about them. I went into the Eclipse Valve with a simple, preexisting amplifier input design, built two of them, then slapped them together. That was version .01. It was okay, but it was more of an overdrive and had only a simple low-pass tone control that  I spliced in between the stages. I passed the design around to the Runoffgroove guys to get their opinion on it and came out a couple months later with a version close to the Eclipse Valve you see today. Sebastian (a.k.a. STM) basically looked at what I was doing and gave me something many times better. I made two or three small changes, but I credit 99% of the design itself to Sebastian, Brian, and the others at Runoffgroove HQ.

Beavis: Starved plate tube designs usually have a pretty bad reputation, but the Eclipse Valve really delivers a great boosted sound all at 12 volts. Do you see the Eclipse Valve as a building block that will allow you to design additional tube-based pedals?

Mark: There are more 12v tube designs on my desk that are based on the Eclipse Valve. There might be some dirt and modulation designs in there.

Beavis: I have trouble keeping track of where my wallet and watch are. How do you track the hundreds of parts you need to keep in inventory to keep all the kits stocked?

Mark: I have no idea. Really. By the way, if you find my wallet and watch, please call.

Beavis: What's the biggest thrill you've had so far with Officially Licensed Circuits?

Mark: There's not any single thrill. I have great partners and great customers. Both of those make it all one, big thrill.

Beavis: Is OLC your full time job or do you do other things?

Mark: OLC is a really fun hobby with responsibilities. Professionally, I'm a producer and audio engineer.

Beavis: It seems that some of the best stompbox ideas and products come from that background. How does the role of producer/audio engineer interact with the way you design circuits? What do you "listen" for?

Mark: One of the aspects of my profession is getting a mix that sounds good on near-field monitors to also sound good elsewhere. There's a fine art to it that comes with years of practice. I apply some of that to predict how an overdrive, for example, might sound on another amp.

Beavis: What are your favorite guitars, amps, pedals, and bands?

Mark: Guitar: Explorer shapes. My favorites of those are the guitars that James Hetfield used to play. The ESPs and that Ken Lawrence Explorer he played would be my dream axes. Amp: I'm digging stereo rigs now. That's a big list. Pedal: I can't pick just a couple of them... and this is supposed to be ten minutes. Band: I like several Christian metal bands and that's the genre I listen to most. In my car right now, though: Metallica, In Flames, The Cure, Depeche Mode. That's a spectrum...

Beavis: If you had unlimited time and resources, what would you design?

Mark: I'd take a stab at high-end, MIDI-controllable preamps. Stuff that I  can't justify buying.

Beavis: That's interesting. The DIY community pretty much hits a brick wall when it comes to digital designs. With MIDI control, saving settings, etc. it is usually too much of a challenge to move into the binary realm. What do you think could change that?

Mark: We're talking unlimited time and resources, so anything I cook up without any ceiling wouldn't be a DIY project for the masses. It would be something along the lines of a Beavis Audio contraption. Probably fewer knobs and switches, though. :)

Beavis: Do you know where Jimmy Hoffa is buried?

Mark: I've been asked this a lot lately. Won't you people just leave me alone about it?

Beavis: What in the OLC future pipeline? Share a secret?

Mark: Many of my ideas come from my customers' suggestions. There are a few things in the works... but it looks like the ten minutes is up.

Beavis: Convenient :) Thanks Mark.

Mark: Thank you!