HIGH FLYER

Adrian Thorpe of ThorpyFX remembers the flight path - and turbulence behind Chris Buck's Electric Lightning overdrive/boost, named after a fighter jet and packing a bona fide valve

- Jamie Dickson & Henry Yates

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-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?’”

Launched earlier this year, the resulting valve-based overdrive/boost has already pricked up ears, reviewed in issue 513 (“it delivers all the drive sounds you’ll need”) and regularly heard on Buck’s YouTube channel. Now, says Thorpe, he hopes the Electric Lightning’s egalitarian design will see it adopted across the board. “We had it in our mind that it needed to be good for other people as well as Chris. So that’s designed in from the start.”

What was your shared vision for the Electric Lightning?

“Well, we’ve been friends for a long time. I’ve tried to support Chris, and vice versa, as we’ve both grown on our journey. At the point when Chris said, ‘Yeah, let’s make it happen,’ we hadn’t decided on anything, particularly. We just knew it needed to be something he could use with any rig, to sound like Chris, right? He’s renowned for using his Klons and Bluesbreakers, but he also tries everything and bounces between things, and he likes to stack things and all the rest of it. So we made the decision to do something a bit special for him – and went with a valve pedal.”

Chris is such a vocal player, with lots of legato and fluid-sounding licks in his style. Why did a valve pedal seem the best way to complement that?