The Story of Zorro Devices

I was about 13 years when I started getting into music. My dad was always playing the classical guitar, but that style of music didn't really grab me. The music of Kiss did. Ace Frehley's guitar solos were the stuff. Mabye I could do that - why not give the guitar a try?

My dad scrounged up an old Harmony acoustic for me to start out on. I quickly upgraded to some cheap Japanese electric. I totally practised and practised on this thing. In the bedroom. It was a couple of years before I started jamming with some buddies.

At the end of high school I was doing plenty of bar gigs with the Sharx in Bellingham, Washington. I wanted to go in a different musical direction and I hooked up with proto-dirge/grunge-ists DSML.

Below: DSML at the Metropolis, February 1984. That's me on the right with an Ibanez going through a Fender Bassman. Photo by K. Shroud.

It was about this time that I started to get an interest in the electronics and the amplifiers and all the stuff that was actually making the sounds! I started with electronics coursework at Bellingham Technical College. This was followed by degrees in Physics and Geophysics at UW in Seattle.

College and my career took me out of the music scene for a time. Almost 20 years to be exact. In 2003 I picked up a Harmony acoustic and did the coffee-shop-singer-songwriter thing. By 2009 I was playing electric guitar with Brad Yaeger and the Country Gentlemen (now known as Brad Yaeger and the Night Terrors).

A recent bout of unemployment gave me some time to rediscover my passion for electronics and guitar effects. And I've been totally hooked on pedal repairs, pedal mods, and building clone kits.

Below: Jorge Zorro rocking the slide on a Mexi-Strat with Brad Yaeger and the Country Gentlemen at the Mars Bar, Seattle, 2009. Photo by Nicolase Mallat.