THE FULL STORY
The story of ROSS Pedals isn’t the story of a product, or even of a company. It’s the story of a person, an entrepreneur on par with innovators like Leo Fender and Paul Bigsby. His birth name was Charles, but his friends–and he had plenty–called him Bud. The nickname fit. Whether he was chatting with one of his production line builders, spurring his engineers onto greater feats of amplification or rubbing elbows with music icons like Johnny Cash and Charley Pride, Bud was first and foremost a friend. Bud’s oldest son Stan even claims that Bud knew all of his 200+ employees by name and “knew their kids' names.”
(From Left to right) Larry Emmett, Jim Wilson, Frank Huffman, Bud Ross
(from left to right) Charley Pride, Carolyn Ross, Bud Ross
Charles “Bud” Ross was born on May 31, 1940, in Ashford, West Virginia, to Stanton and Helen (Barker) Ross. He moved to Kansas at age 12 when his mother took a job in an Overland Park school. He never graduated from high school, but that didn’t deter him from his ideas and ambitions. In a 2023 interview, Stan Ross confirmed, “[Bud] was self-taught on just about everything that he took on, and so that side just intrigues me on how well he could get his arms around something.”
Bud’s music career began in 1958, after meeting Hal Nichols in The Soda Shop in Overland Park, Kansas. Nichols had a four-piece band, and Ross became the band's manager. Bud formed the Bygones in 1960, juggling the roles of lead singer, rhythm guitarist and promoter. That same year, Bud married Carolyn Rumage.
Carolyn and Bud Ross
Stan Ross with Johnny Cash’s Kustom rig
Bud later joined Larry Emmett and the Sliders and taught himself to play bass. During this period, Bud built his own amp to save money and inadvertently launched the business that would become a musical gear dynasty. The same year, while playing at the Soc-Hop in Overland Park, Bud met experienced auto upholsterer Dave Gates, who showed him how to do a “tuck-and-roll job” on Ross's bass amp. Dave used a faux leather material called naugahyde, applied with a poly-foam sheet beneath the vinyl finish.
Frank Huffman, Jim Wilson, Bud Ross, Larry Emmett
Naugahyde (a trademark of the Uniroyal company) had been padding the seats of automobiles since the 1930s, and by the early sixties it was still the preferred material for money-conscious grease monkeys to reupholster their hot rods. The use of the tuck-and-roll method not only set the amp apart visually, but also made the amp more durable during transport.
Though Bud admitted at the time that he “[didn’t] know the difference between a resistor and a capacitor,” he still took notes with the goal of eventually launching his own amplification company.
“I worked in electronics for 44 ½ years. If it hadn’t been for Bud, [I] would not have…It was a fun job. I loved to go to work.”
– Bonnie Reno, former Kustom amp builder
It’s Who You Know
Bud founded Kustom Amplification in 1964 (he called it Lotztone for the first year and a half), funded by a $1,000 loan from his father. He used the money to rent a home near the small farming town of Spring Hill, Kansas, and began manufacturing amplifiers out of his garage. Bud also built public address systems using the same design. The Kustom amplifiers were made using steel chassis and wood-framed cabinets, and many came with three or four 12” Altec Lansing speakers. At the same time, Bud adapted Dave’s “tuck-and-roll” exterior design so he could execute it using his old sewing machine. Kustom eventually offered seven different color choices for its naugahyde finish: red sparkle, blue sparkle, gold sparkle, cascade sparkle (teal), charcoal sparkle (gray), silver sparkle (white) and flat black.
While buying speakers at McGee Radio in Kansas City, Bud noticed a sign shop across the street called Art’s Sign. For a fee of $3.50, the in-house graphic designer created the now iconic Kustom Amplification logo in just thirty minutes.
At first, Bud had a hard time getting local music stores to carry his amplifiers because those stores already had exclusive contracts with brands like Gibson, Fender and Peavey. Undaunted, Bud hired a retired salesman from Jenkins Music (one of the largest music stores in Kansas City) and put him on the road to try to sell Kustom amps to smaller music stores across the midwest United States.
When the salesman’s car broke down around St. Paul, Minnesota, Bud flew up to help get him back on the road. Afterwards, Bud was sitting in the airport on standby trying to get a flight back to Kansas City. The National Chamber of Commerce was having a convention in St. Paul that same week. By sheer coincidence, Bud ended up sitting next to Fred Harris, the manager for the Chanute Kansas Chamber of Commerce. During their hours-long conversation, Bud mentioned he needed a building to start manufacturing his guitar amplifiers.
The Chanute Kansas Chamber of Commerce was offering loans to entrepreneurs to start new businesses. In the mid-sixties, the Chanute economy wasn’t doing well because its historically strong agriculture and oil industries had fallen out of favor. Bud’s business provided new investment opportunities as well as local jobs in Chanute. Bud launched his first factory with a $16,000 bank loan (secured in part by Fred Harris) and a $3,000 loan from the Chanute Development Corporation. With a factory of his own at last, Bud reached out to his existing music industry connections to develop his flagship amplifiers. Engineer Fred Barry and Bud co-developed the original circuits for the first of many future lines of Kustom amps.
Fred Berry
Initially, pricing for the amplifiers started at $500 (more than $4,800 in 2023). Within nine months, Kustom Amplification was netting more than $10,000/month (about $97,000 today). Kustom was not only headed for massive success, it was also a frontrunner in quality solid state amplifiers, abandoning Fender and Marshall’s vacuum tube designs for a more stable transistor-based concept.
“[Tom and I] were playing through Kustom amps…I was playing a Kustom K200A, which was an amazing rig. It was roughly 100 watts and was solid-state, but it was probably the best-sounding solid-state amp ever made.”
John Fogerty (Creedence Clearwater Revival)
Bud’s First Factories
In 1964, the first Kustom factory was set up in an old grocery store (formerly called the Seventh Street Market at Seventh Street and Steuben Avenue in Chanute). In fact, the previous owner had left so recently that there were still loaves of bread on the shelves when Bud and his employees set up shop. The factory windows facing Seventh and Steuben displayed everything that was happening inside.
Kids like eight-year-old David Bideau (now a Chanute attorney and related to Bud Ross by marriage), would often ride their bikes over to watch the builders assemble the amplifiers and (in his own words) “drool over” the tuck-and-roll amps. This was the same year that the Beatles performed on The Ed Sullivan Show to an audience of 70 million people, changing every American kid’s dream job from singing cowboy to rock’n’roll star almost overnight.
Bud and his family lived in an apartment on the building’s second floor, which had more than a few drawbacks.
The Ross family apartment
Bud etched the copper clad circuit boards in the apartment bathtub, a process requiring strong chemicals like sulfuric acid that eventually destroyed the building’s plumbing. Bud’s former wife Carolyn Ross also recalled that when Bud’s workers were testing out amplifiers “the dishes in my china cabinet above them would rattle, and I was afraid they were going to fall.” Carolyn served as the Secretary-Treasurer and Director of Kustom Electronics, also working on the product line drilling holes in circuit boards and traveling to conventions like NAMM to promote the company. Her father had even taught Bud how to build cabinets when he first launched Kustom Electronics.
Within two and a half years, Bud and Kustom had outgrown the grocery store sized factory and built a 54,000 square feet building at 1010 W. Chestnut Street, Chanute, KS.
1010 W. Chesnut Street, Chanute, Kansas
In 1966, Naugahyde launched a new promotional character (called Nauga), part of a mythical species who shed their hides once a year to provide the naugahyde material used in furniture, car interiors, clothing, shoes, accessories and Kustom Amplifiers. To capitalize on the popularity of the Nauga character (who became so ubiquitous that he appeared on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson in 1966), Carolyn Ross began manufacturing small dolls using discarded naugahyde scraps from the Kustom factory, employing three other girls to help keep up with the demand. She called the dolls Kustom Kats or Naugies and sold them at music and toy stores. Kustom gave away 3,500 dolls at a trade show in Chicago in 1968, which proved to be one of their most successful (and cost-effective) advertising campaigns. Carolyn estimates that they created 9,000 Kustom Kats altogether.
Sometime between 1967 and 1968, Bud Ross opened a second location at 210 W Main Street in Chanute, Kansas (at a former Ford dealership & repair center). Bud was named Small Business Person of the Year in Kansas for 1968 by the Small Business Administration, and the number of Kustom employees grew to about 100.
This same year, Bud collaborated with designers Semie Moseley and Doyle Reading to design a unique Kustom guitar, a semi-hollow body instrument similar to the Rickenbacker style guitar which featured two single coil DeArmond pickups and a Gretsch-style adjustable bridge that could be ordered with or without the Bigsby vibrato tailpiece. The guitars came in colors like white, blue, watermelon burst, cherry-orange sunburst, natural ash, black ash and white ash.
Pack St. Clair
At the same time, Bud Ross also started production on a line of giant super slides (dubbed Giant Mighty Slides) with his neighbor Pack St. Clair under the company name Kustom Recreational Equipment. Kustom Recreational Equipment started as a branch of Kustom Electronics, but soon became its own entity. Bud was forced to discontinue the giant slides fairly quickly due to lawsuits. St. Clair explained, “A kid would slip a piece of wax paper under that burlap bag (so he could go faster), and– instant broken leg.” Ross sold the company in 1970 at a loss of $750,000.
In order to get more use out of the fiberglass equipment they’d purchased to make the Giant Super Slides, Kustom Recreational Equipment branched out into making boats under the brand name Cobalt Boats. Bud sold his interest in the company to St. Clair in 1970, after which St. Clair moved the company to Neodesha, Kansas.
From 1969 through 1971, Bud also manufactured pipes for the oil industry under the brand Trans-Lines Inc. (He liquidated his assets in 1971 at a loss of $1 million). As a serial entrepreneur, Bud sold off businesses almost as often as he launched them, but through it all his musical empire kept moving forward.
Bud took Kustom Electronics public in 1969. The same year, they showed a profit of $432,000 on $5.8 million in sales (the equivalent of $48 million today).
With 275 employees, Kustom Electronics was the largest employer in Chanute, Kansas. Their popularity arguably peaked that same year when John Fogerty of Creedence Clearwater Revival used a 1968 Kustom K200 A4 amplifier onstage at Woodstock.
John Fogerty (Creedence Clearwater Revival)
Kustom amplifiers and speakers were also utilized by artists like the Grateful Dead, Leon Russell, Johnny Cash, Roy Clark, The Jackson Five, Carl Perkins, the Carpenters, Charley Pride, Fats Domino and Elvis Presley’s touring band.
“I found a whole box of awards from Nashville…I said, ‘Bud, look. What do you want me to do with these?’ ‘Put them in the trash.’ ‘Why?’ He said, ‘If you start believing what people say about you, you become what you think they want you to be.’"
Steve Small (former Kustom engineer)
Not Afraid to Fail
By 1970, Kustom Electronics had more than 700 music dealers in the United States and abroad. Just a year later, Bud purchased an industrial building in Chanute, KS to expand his factory for a down payment of $130,000. By this time, Kustom Electronics had 350 employees, but they speculated that the increased factory size would create space for up to 250 more. Always looking for ways to diversify the Kustom brand, Bud acquired the Sweden-based music company Goya Guitars from Avnet Incorporated in 1970, transitioning the 210 W Main Street facility to guitar production. In 1972, the Goya brand was taken over by the Chanute-based company Dude Incorporated. The same year, Kustom Electronics acquired the Camco Company, which manufactured drums and drum accessories.
At the height of their success, Kustom Electronics brought in more than $6 million per year (the equivalent of nearly $50 million today).
Bud, in turn, invested those profits into peripheral companies like Kustom Signals and Kustom Data Communications. After developing the most effective police radars on the market (specifically: moving radar, gun radar and frequency radar) under the brand name Kustom Signals, Bud’s police radars were bestsellers from 1970 through the late 1990s. The business was based out of the factory that Bud had previously built at 1010 W. Chestnut Street.
In the early 1970s, Kustom came out with a new product line under the Kasino name that produced guitar/bass amplifiers and P.A. systems.
An optimist at heart, Bud loved starting new business ventures, but his bets didn’t always pay off, with one notable exception being the weekend that he took all the company’s petty cash to Vegas and gambled until he had enough money to make payroll. Incredibly, while he was gone engineer Steve Small had discovered and contained a fire in the factory’s circuit board area. Thankfully, the damage was minimal, but when Bud returned and heard the news, he asked half-seriously, “Steve, why didn’t you just let it burn?” Steve recalls, “It was an inside joke relative to how our investor Kenny Keas continued to keep us financially ‘dry’ and running hand-to-mouth. We needed much more cash invested to take the company where Bud envisioned.”
By 1972 the profits for Kustom Electronics had dwindled to $37,700 (just 1/160th of the $6 million profits they’d brought in a few years earlier). Feeling burnt out from multiple commercial failures, Bud sold Kustom Music to Baldwin Pianos the same year for $3 million (for reference, Fender had offered to buy Kustom Electronics from Bud just a few years earlier for $12 million in cash but Bud had rejected the deal).
Ross resigned as president of Kustom Electronics in 1973 and sold his 35% interest in the company to Cecil Van Tuyl (a Kansas City car dealer) in August 1975. Notably, Kustom Data Communication and Kustom Signals carried on separately.
“When someone asks me, ‘Kustom or Ross, what name or phrase comes to mind?’, it's quality. Because the people that manufactured the pedals, amplifiers and guitars just did a phenomenal job. It's amazing that they still work after all these years.”
David Bideau (Kustom enthusiast)
The Road Less Traveled
Ultimately, Bud Ross loved the guitar industry too much to stay away from it for long. He launched the amp manufacturing company Road Electronics in 1974, which based its aesthetic on the look of an anvil road case. The amps would later be used by artists like Prince and on shows like American Bandstand.
Bud was forced to give up the venture just a year later after the bank forced a sale to the Los Angeles-based Griffin Music Inc. Because he had financed Road Electronics entirely by himself, Bud filed for personal bankruptcy soon afterwards, prompting Chanute businessman John Washburn to quip, “Every product [Bud Ross] has ever built has been just great. Everybody who takes over his companies after he bankrupts them says so.”
In the mid-70s, Bud Ross partnered with Chanute oilman Kenny Keas (a businessman with whom he had previously invested) to launch Keas Electronics, and in 1977, Bud launched yet another company: ROSS Musical Products. In doing so, he introduced the world to a new line of simple and exceptional-sounding guitar pedals.
Because it launched the same year as BOSS’s industry-changing compact pedals and only three years after MXR and DOD, ROSS was never able to capture the percentage of the market it truly deserved. Even so, ROSS pedals saw local and regional success as well as a few notable players like Phish’s Trey Anastasio.
Bud’s son Stan was assigned the job of driving across America to music stores with the pedals in hand. Stan’s pitch was simple: he would introduce himself as Bud Ross’s son and offer to show them new guitar pedals from the man that created Kustom Amps. Stan estimates that they had a 90% success rate of buy-in.
Despite a successful beginning, ROSS pedals only existed for a few years between the late seventies and early eighties, with the number of employees peaking at just 20 people. The original ROSS logo was created by Wichita-based designer Jim Ball, who would later design the Birdview Satellites logo.
In the following sections, we look at five eras of ROSS pedals, factoring in the manufacturing locations, design changes and why these details matter.
ERA 1
“Bud Ross was a phenomenal innovator. His ideas were ahead of his time.” – David Bideau (Kustom enthusiast)
The earliest Ross pedals were manufactured at 12520 West Cedar Drive, Lakewood, CO, where Bud moved with his son Stan and his second wife Ganella in late 1976/early 1977.
These earliest versions are often ignored or simply unknown to most pedal enthusiasts, but it is a crucial part of the brand’s history. At some point early in this move, Bud first had the idea to make effects pedals. He saw the explosion of brands like Electro-Harmonix, MXR and BOSS, and decided to throw his hat into the pedal-building ring, too. When he arrived in Colorado, Bud met an engineer named Dave Smith. Dave owned an electronics manufacturing facility and made Bud a tempting offer: Bud could design the pedals and Dave would build them. The partnership didn’t end up working out. The pedals were ultimately a small piece of pie for Dave’s overall business, which led to issues with quality, timeliness and overall production that Bud couldn’t tolerate. Bud knew he needed to partner with someone who believed in him wholeheartedly “like they did back in the Kustom days.”
At the same time, MXR was threatening legal action against ROSS Musical Products for trade dress infringement due to the obvious similarities caused by the off-the-shelf bud box enclosure that MXR had used first. They had threatened legal action against DOD for the same reason.
At this address in mid-1978, ROSS pedals took on their now iconic aesthetic. Bud himself designed the sloped enclosure with recessed pots (this would inspire modern designs like Line 6 DL4) and the lineup expanded beyond just Phaser and Distortion, introducing several new pedals including the legendary ROSS Compressor.
Bud's choice of colors, typeset and names also didn't help this dilemma.
ERA 2
“[Bud] actually went back to Chanute and told some folks what was going on…‘You know, we can really make this into something. I need someone to believe in me.’" – Stan Ross (Bud’s oldest son)
At some point in late 1977/early 1978, Bud traveled back to Kansas and reconnected with Kenny Keas, convincing him to back ROSS Musical Products. In 1978, ROSS pedal production moved from Lakewood, Colorado to Chanute, Kansas, back to the original Kustom location at 210 West Main (the building had been leased by UPS after Baldwin Piano purchased Kustom Electronics).
Since the 210 W Main headquarters lacked automation, the pedals circuits were hand populated and wave soldered. The building had originally been used as a Ford dealership and service center, and the old service garage housed the newly installed ROSS paint booth and silkscreen machinery. This era of ROSS pedals featured the brand’s iconic color palette and texture, which was achieved by spraying Sherwin Williams Polane, adding a second texture coat on top of the first coat and then putting them in a small oven located in the garage to dry the paint. This location's manufacturing setup was designed by Dennis Steinman. By 1979, ROSS Musical Products were also making their own etched circuit boards in house.
The original mechanical designs and circuit board layouts for ROSS guitar pedals were completed by former plant manager, Jerry Schell (Jerry eventually started his own electronics company in Chanute called Schell Electronics). The circuit design was completed by Steve Phillips, who still works for Stan Ross. Kustom circuit designer Larry Jackson may also have been involved. Vietnam veteran Leon Joy handled purchasing. The Baugh-Dines firm designed the company’s famous advertisements and graphics. Around this time, Bud also pulled industrial engineer Steve Small from his job at Kustom Electronics to work for ROSS Musical Products, where he set up the new company’s functional tests, board tests and final tests for quality assurance and general production method.
This era also introduced a second, larger guitar pedal format featured in pedals like the Delay, Flanger, Distortion Phaser and EQ. These larger models continued through Era 3.
ERA 3
“As an entrepreneur, [Bud Ross] is fantastic, as good as you’re going to find.” – Dwight Blackwood (former director of Birdview Satellites)
In 1980, ROSS Musical Products was sold to the IMC (the International Music Company) in Fort Worth, TX. Representatives from IMC came and loaded up all of the remaining ROSS Musical Product equipment and inventory, filling three semi-trucks, and drove it back to Fort Worth. Shortly afterwards, production for ROSS moved to Taiwan. Under IMC, the preexisting models were relaunched and three new ROSS pedals were released by June 1981. This change in manufacturing introduces the third Era of ROSS products like the Phaser and Distortion.
To the casual viewer, these pedals may look identical to ERA 2, but a few small details were changed. “Chanute, Kansas'' was removed from the back plate text, the ROSS name was now boxed-in on top of the pedal and the typeset used to identify the pedal’s name and controls was tweaked slightly. Under IMC ownership, ROSS continued to manufacture various products offshore through the eighties and nineties, even as guitarists began replacing vintage pedals like ROSS with complex new effects, rack units and DSP-based stompboxes.
Between 1980 and 1981, Bud also ran a research and development company called C. A. Ross & Associates, through which he designed the satellite TV systems he would later sell under the Birdview Satellite brand. In March 1980, Bud Ross launched Birdview Satellites (to pick up the signal for satellite TV channels like CNN and HBO). Most satellites at the time cost between $12,500- $25,000, but he managed to bring the cost down enough to sell Birdview Satellites for $1,995-$3,000 apiece by 1985.
A 1985 article in the Daily American Republic estimated that Birdview shipped about 200 satellite dishes per day directly to its 1,400 retail dealers. Profits for the company peaked at $3.8 million, but this venture eventually went bankrupt in August 1986.
In 1993, Phish guitarist Trey Anastasio stole a 1970s ROSS Compressor from bassist Mike Gordon’s pedalboard and added it to his own, inadvertently rocketing the vintage units back to popularity. When the Compressor disappeared from his board starting in the infamous Phish 2.0 period (roughly December 2002), fans assumed he’d lost it. A group calling themselves People For A Compressed Trey pooled their resources and sent him a replacement in 2008. Trey posted a message thanking them for the gift, adding, “I’d drive over to the practice room and plug it in right now, but I can’t seem to find my old vintage Maserati. Hmmm…”
In the internet and forum age, most guitarists placed ROSS pedals in the category of the collectable, odd and mysterious. Though they still existed for a few more decades, not much was known of how or why.
Bud was inducted into the Kansas Music Hall of Fame in 2006. Though his music career spans nearly half a century, his work ethic may be best summed up in his 1969 interview with The Kansas City Star: “You don’t know how important it was to me to succeed in life. I dedicated myself to do it. There is a vast difference between someone who wishes to be successful and someone who totally wants to do it.” After launching some of the most successful businesses in Kansas’s history (manufacturing everything from playground equipment, boats, satellites and police scanners to amplifiers), Bud Ross died on March 10, 2018, at age 77.
ERA 4
“Our goal was quality, and we never changed that goal.” - Bud Ross
In 2019, Bud Ross' grandson, Cameron Ross, launched ROSS Audibles with the goal of authentically bringing his family's line of ROSS pedals back to life.
Cameron Ross
More than anything, Cameron was inspired by his grandfather’s legacy: “I remember him telling me all the stories from his heyday…all the stuff he did with the Jackson 5—watching the kids perform in their garage, crazy stories like that! One of my dad's best friends, who grew up with him, told me about coming over to the house to get my dad, and Neil Diamond was sitting there with Bud, just hanging out, swapping stories. He loved doing what he did!"
Due to multiple production obstacles, including a worldwide pandemic, ROSS Audibles found itself on an indefinite hiatus in 2020.
ERA 5
“JHS was the clear choice. [They were] the ones that cared about the story, cared about Bud, and cared about the direction of the company.” – Cameron Ross (Bud’s grandson)
In 2020, JHS Pedals founder Josh Scott contacted Cameron and proposed a partnership to retell the ROSS story and relaunch the brand. With Josh’s dedication to pedal history, his experience in manufacturing, and his previous collaborations with pedal companies like Keeley Electronics, BOSS and Electro-Harmonix, the partnership between them was a perfect fit.
Released in 2023, this new era of ROSS includes five pedals. The Distortion, Phaser and Compressor replicate the original circuits from Era 2 of ROSS, while the Chorus pays faithful homage to the Era 3 Chorus. The fifth model, the ROSS Fuzz, did not exist in previous ROSS history. Instead, its circuit was pulled from a 1960s Kustom amplifier and transformed into a pedal.
Josh says, “I am dedicated to pursue the manufacturing, production and evolution of this legacy brand in the same way Bud Ross would. As I have said time and time again, ‘Companies don’t make things, people do.’ I am beyond excited to merge the amazing legacy of Bud Ross’s life with the hardworking, passionate team at JHS Pedals.”