Martin Dupras

I am amazed that, unlike consumer electronics manufacturers, musical equipment makers (in my experience) generally fall into two camps: the ones who go out of their way to help musicians, and the ones who just can’t be bothered (or who are too disorganised to offer any customer service at all.)

In the latter camp, we have Nobels, from Germany. I  like their products (I have several). They’re well built, sound good and are reliable.

I had a new idea recently: in my live bass rig, I’d like to put four distortion pedals in parallel (yes, really) and run them through a switchable loop; that way I can cut them all from the chain when they’re not on, and when they are I can use any combination of the distortions.

However, hardly anyone makes an active splitter that will feed four pedals, and hardly anyone (again) makes a simple high-impedance four-channel mixer suitable for a pedalboard. Except Nobel, who have just the right thing.

Here’s the rub: you can’t buy them.

Nobels has a list of UK distributors, none or which actually stock any of the pedals, and none of which have an online ordering system.

I’ve looked at European online dealers, and the only who has a website I can read it Thomann (which I’ve used successfully in the past) but they only list one of the pedals, which is not even in stock.

I’ve emailed Nobels from their own website to ask how and where I can buy their products, and they have not yet (one week later) replied to me.

You’d think they actually want to sell their products, but apparently not.