Spaceman

Spaceman Effects Pedals — Portland's Secret Weapon

Zak Martin founded Spaceman in 2009 in Portland, Oregon out of the same frustration that drives most boutique builders: he was a working musician and audio engineer who could not find pedals that met his standards for tone, so he taught himself to design them from scratch. What began as a one-man operation building strictly limited, entirely hand-wired pedals has grown into a small team of musicians, artists, and engineers who share a single founding conviction: every Spaceman pedal is an inspiration machine, not just a tool.

The circuits are entirely original, not clones or variations on familiar designs, and they interact with the player and the instrument in ways that more conventional pedals do not. Players who have found Spaceman consistently describe the pedals as secret weapons, effects with a character so distinctive and musically useful that they become the fixed point around which everything else on the board is arranged.

The lineup is organized across two series. The PDX Custom Series represents the original Spaceman experience: small-batch, fully hand-soldered and hand-wired in Portland using through-hole components, with engraved faceplates, vintage-sourced knobs and hardware, powder-coated enclosures, and hand-numbered tags that acknowledge the limited nature of each run. These are objects as much as they are instruments, and they disappear quickly when new batches arrive. The Cadet Series brings the same original circuits and sonic philosophy to a more accessible price point, hand-assembled with contemporary SMD manufacturing and the same signature Spaceman aesthetic in a more available format. Every pedal in both series carries a limited lifetime warranty.

The current catalog spans fuzz in both silicon and germanium configurations, optical tremolo, preamp and overdrive, octave fuzz, and phaser, with new designs and limited editions arriving in small batches throughout the year.