Little Emperor is the creator of novel, bespoke instruments and electronic music technology.
Born of a need to produce sounds, effects and performances outside the limits of the existing pro audio offerings, Little Emperor set about creating / moding off the shelf equipment, as well as scratch building bespoke one offs, lovingly crafting them until they achieve a tailored fit.
The Porchboard:
A handy doodad to create a kick drum sound from a foot tap, mostly used in an acoustic performance to enhance the performance with a resounding thumping kick drum sound.
The porchboard was inspired by the simplicity of stamping your boot on a hollow wooden floor, as in a porch floor board. This version utilizes the metal of the license plate moving in a magnetic field and producing an electronic signal that is then amplified to make a kick drum sound
The Snake Box:
A 5w solid state battery powered portable practice amplifier.
Cigar Box Amplifier:
A 5w solid state battery powered portable practice amplifier.
Nineboys Diddly Bow Amp Pack:
I was asked by the lovely folk at Nineboys musical instruments to develop an amplifier pack for their range of Diddly Bows. Transforming the instrument into a portable battery powered amplified instrument.
The end product produced a very responsive and raw sound which fit perfectly with the rustic nature and simplicity of the Diddly Bow.
I was also tasked with developing a relicing / aged finish, a little heat / flame and a series of tinted wax applications built up a proper retro used look.
Lil Can O Whoopass:
This little Tin Can amplifier packs a punch, with an increase in output compared to it's previous iteration of the Diddly Bow amplifier. This little can is a compact portable battery powered amp for use on guitars, diddly bows and harp mics it also works on mp3 players or devices with jack outputs.
1990s Fender Blues Devile 4x10 Transformation, using a Fromel mod kit, this nice but disappointing amplifier was transformed into a fantastic Fender 59 Bassman comparable tube amplifier. Fully recapped and all sonic components uprated, including hand wiring.
The original raw tweed was restored and finished with a treatment of blended shellac and clear coated for practicality.
1971 Fender Silver Face Bandmaster Reverb TFL5005D,
Up until the late 1960s Fender produced some of the most iconic and beautiful sounding amplifiers of all time. A victim of it's own success Fender was bought by CBS (Columbia Broadcasting System) for $13 million ($112 million today) CBS set about going global with mass production of Fender products. Unfortunately to make this viable the quality of components used suffered and the amplifiers were just not as good.
Fortunately upgrade kits are available for these amps, devised to return the amp components back to high quality ones of previous years and by restoring the wiring design of the original 1960 Fender amps these amp mods make an awesome upgrade. The majority of the original components were replaced and this particular modification transformed this amp back to a Blackface Bandmaster Reverb.
TomTom Monitor:
What do you do when you want to hear more of your guitar but don't want to turn up your monitor and add extra sound energy into your performance / recording environment.
Make a TomTom Monitor, instead of leaning down to hear more signal from your floor monitor I raised the monitor up by using the handy flexibly adjustable legs of the the tom tom drum.
A 12" speaker is mounted on a 15mm ply soundboard baffle and set in the 5 layer birch ply drum shell.
It can be plugged in to any amp suitable amp source and works great as an auxiliary guitar cab monitor
T-Shirts
We Built A Recording Studio
A pair of fully independently floating air gapped recording / audio referencing isolation pods. Very pleased with these..
Classic British EQ Barn Find
From a Welsh barn find to the back of an 1990s imported Japanese SUV back to the new studio to make classic analogue golden audio goodness...
Acoustic Guitar Preamp Half Rack
Scratch Built Electric Guitar
Portable preamp, eq, compressor and di racks for dragging your gear on a bus or tube train to get to your gig with a bunch more gear already set up and ready to perform.
Little white pedal platform amp with optional tube preamp section for added warmth.
