Home
Guitar effects
My music
Pictures and stuff
Links

Design and sound concepts

 

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.

me

 

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!


fret press

Guitar repair
Guitar repairs available:
Set-ups
Pots, knobs change, whole harness rewiring for all types of guitars
Pickups/hardware installations
Piezo pickups installations for acoustic guitars
Custom preamps/equalizers/boosters
Refretting (ONLY rosewood/ebony)

 

Back to top
Effects

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.My oldest son, Alexander Junior, is 21 years old now and lives in Minsk.
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

Web site created by Alexander Rastopchin. All rights reserved. Copyright ©2002-2020