Welcome to my site!
I really hope that you will enjoy navigating it, find some interesting/useful information and join the crowd of people searching for Holy Grail of guitar sound and music. I've been doing it for more than thirty years and now (thanks to the Internet) feel like sharing my experience with you. If you're curious who I am - read About Me.

The reason I've started to make my own effects, amps and guitars, is that I never felt satisfied with stock gear (as Jerry Seinfeld would say " Not that anything's wrong with it").
You can buy a guitar with two humbuckers and then add coil splitting and phase switches- and the whole new world opens up! A tiny capacitor at the volume control pot suddenly makes a guitar sound sparkling bright in the middle position… A mini-switch mounted between the tone controls lets you connect neck and bridge pickups to get that "Tele" sound, soak your old single coil in hot bee wax and get rid of microphonic feedback, buy a can of DeoxIT and forget about scratchy pots…The list goes on and on.

The reason I've started to sell my effects, amps and services - at almost every gig I've played, people ask me what's that green box I use? Is that a 67 Strat? Stock amp?
Over time I've improved my technology, shop equipment, knowledge base and now I proudly present some results of my labor of love.
Everything is HAND made, holes have been drilled, paint have been sprayed, tweed has been cut and glued, parts point to point soldered , PCB's etched, all in NYC.

Another thing - YOU can design something special and I will bring it to life. I strongly believe in personalized gear, not a Jimmy Page signature on your Les Paul, but YOUR idea incorporated in YOUR sound, even if it's a super bright blue LED on your VOX WAH pedal or portable solid-state amp inside the Samsonite travel case (one was designed by Todd Colburn, stuffed by me), or effect that emulates roaring hum of unplugged guitar cord intermittently touching your toe.

To find out about prices, warranty (life-time), etc. please contact me via E-mail
Repairs of tube and solid state amps, mixers,guitars - drop off at The Studio Fast turnaround- 2-3 days!

Guitar effects page contains all the stompboxes available for order, and sound samples (played by me) with a description. All of them are QUIET, FLEXIBLE, RUGGED, RELIABLE and DIFFERENT. You can choose the effect at the top of page or just scroll down; note that the "Miscellaneous" link leads you to descriptions of all odd things, like Theremins, wired Feedbacker, multi-effects ideas and so on.
My music page contains selected mp3(or whatever technology I used to reduce file size to speedup downloads) recordings of my original music as well as recordings with different bands from the past and present years and some cool pictures.
Pictures and Stuff page contains pictures of effects, people and gear.
Links page - my personal favorites/friends, more stuff coming soon!

About me

I was born on January 9th 1957, in Alma-Ata, Khazakhstan, a republic of the former USSR. Now it's a famous country, thanks to Borat. I didn't have a chance to drink a fermented horse urine back than, but because I was born on the same date with Jimmy Page, my parents forced me to play electric guitar and study English language :-)
At the age of seven my family moved to Belarus, in the western part of the Soviet Union. After graduating from Mogilev high school , I passed exams and was admitted into the prestigious Radio Engineering Institute (in Belarus known as RTI) and became a hardware expert at the computer factory (manufacturing computers, a sort of main frame dinosaurs). But not for a long ...
Two things happened simultaneously- I finally learned how to play guitar and made my first distortion box. From the late seventies till the beginning of nineties I was on the road 300 days a year with different bands and solo performers, going through all ups and downs of a musician's life. The best part was an opportunity to see much of the world, including: Germany, Italy, India, Burma, Laos, Vietnam (twice), Mongolia, Afghanistan ( yeah, in October of 1984 I played some mean guitar for students of Kabul university ) , Burkina Faso( formerly Upper Volta), Ghana, Togo, Nigeria, Ivory Coast, USA.
Since 1993 I've lived in NYC and do pretty much the same - play and teach guitar and make some electronic gadgets for musicians and sound engineers. Less touring though, especially after my youngest son Tal was born.
I've played and recorded with a number of New York musicians - Frankie Paris, Mark The Harper, Moose and The Bulletproof Blues Band, Durand Daniel, "Flaming" Amy Coleman, Joyous Perrin, Roxy Perry, David Gross and John Macaluso, Glenn Branca, Laura Berman, Average White Band ( just one session, but that was fun :-), Victor Smolski (once a young member of Pesnyary Studio, now one of the best guitarists on the planet!)
I do repairs, and have taught at The Studio for over five years ... that's the place to meet musicians, rehearse, do some demos, etc., in the heart of NYC.Now you can jump BACK to the top of the page and check some fun stuff out!
Almost forgot, my name is Alexander Rastopchin, feel free to send me E-mail with questions/suggestions. Please copy/paiste or type E-mail address, and remove "spam":

infospam@rastopdesigns.com

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