ROBERT KEELEY PEDAL MAKER

For Robert Keeley, it’s always been about sound first and foremost. Having built a career chasing his fascination with electronics, he has become one of the world’s more successful and most respected boutique pedal makers. Today, he oversees a 33-strong workforce (24 people in production alone) from his headquarters in Edmond, Oklahoma. To get here, however, he had to follow a long, winding and sometimes precipitous road.

Much of Keeley’s youth was spent hopping around the US and around the globe, as his family followed his father, a captain in the US Air Force, as he moved from post to post. For four influential years during Keeley’s teens, his family was based at Ramstein Air Base in Germany. Here, Keeley’s obsessions grew – not only with guitar but with studio exploits too. Once he got his hands on a Fostex four-track cassette recorder, he became hooked on mastering the art of engineering, recording and overdubbing. But it was only after he’d experienced the allure of building and modifying circuits for himself that Keeley’s focus was really redirected.

While wending his way through a seemingly endless trough of engineering-related educational endeavours – a year-long course in computer building and four years of junior college in electronics followed by four years earning a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering at the University of Oklahoma – Keeley was continually drawn back,