“I said to him, ‘It needs to be valve. It needs to have that sag, that compression, that you can’t necessarily get from a solid-state design’”: Adrian Thorpe on how he made Chris Buck’s awesome, tube-equipped signature pedal, Electric Lightning

ThorpyFX Electric Lightning.

When it comes to the story of the ThorpyFX Electric Lightning, perhaps the strangest aspect is that it didn’t happen sooner. Having watched the rise of his good friend Chris Buck in Cardinal Black, while gathering plaudits for his own Brackley, UK-based pedal operation, Adrian Thorpe finally popped the question during lockdown.

“I think I’ve always had it in the back of my mind that I’d love to make something for Chris,” says the affable designer (and former major in the British Army). “So it was just a conversation we had a few years ago. Like, ‘I know your pedalboard changes all the time, but I want to make something for you that’s absolutely exemplary – what can we do?’”