Behind the Manlay Sound there’s a Spanish well respected musician from Barcelona: Román Gil Romero. His love and passion for music, musicians, sounds and gear ended with him building himself the pedals he loved and dreamed to play.

It all began years ago, when Román was just a teenager and he started to build his first models as a hobby. They were made for self use, learning with each pedal he made while he was discovering the secrets of the electronics. There was a fuzz face, a foxx tone machine, a booster...

Little by little the Román's clones became famous among guitar players. The quality of his stompboxes didn't need from any marketing campaign for being sold since everyone that had tried them could only say great things about them. He started to produce more often and improve his technique until 2009, when he decided to create Manlay Sound LTD, his own company.

All the models are fully handmade. All transistors are hand selected and each pedal is individually tuned and tested for optimum sound and performance.

I honestly hope that you all guitar players can enjoy these small pieces of masterwork.

Alberto Perezsan, recording engineer at Sol de Sants Studio.

 

Besides his skills as a pedal builder Román puts out his talents on the music world. As a solo artist he recently published a record called Vía Láctea which was highly praised by the Spanish music press. Although Román is a skilled guitarist, Vía Láctea is not a guitar nor fuzz driven record, it has a varied instrumentation with hammond, mellotron, piano, vibes, layers of vocals and of course some nice guitar work.

Jordi Maranges, musician-songwritter.