About Us
At Blind Panic Devices, we aim to deliver pedals that are both sonically and visually unique.
I introduced myself to pedal building, during the first wave of covid, because like everybody else i was stuck at home with bugger all else to do. With zero background knowledge, and zero clue what i was getting myself into, i bought a kit from 'Fuzzdogg pedals'. A Dr Q clone.
After spending a weekend throwing solder at it like Super Mario on a flower power high, i made an absolute bollocks of it. 80% of the time is sounded like frying bacon, 15% it was silent, but that glorious 5% of the time it worked, it Quacked!
I was more than happy to sit for half an hour proding and poking until it worked just to get a couple minutes of quacky goodness. I was hooked! I quickly found out about vero boards and moved from PCB kits to vero straight away.
It was around this time i started to get ill. I was already under treatment for an over active thyroid, which can affect vision, and taking immunosuppresants, and was working as a manager at Subway, (cool AF, i know😑) and at the point where i was confident enough to sell some pedals here and there to friends and family, but no where near ready, or even considering trying to take it a thing.
So, i was at work mid week, and noticed i kept getting short bouts of double vision. Assuming it was thyroid related, and coincidentally i already had a schedualed appointment on the friday, i chose to ignore it and carried on working. By the evening, i could barely open my eyes and seemed to have little control over movement of my right eye. Panicking slightly, i had one more shift to get through, then doctors on Friday.
I woke up the next day, regular singular vision and both eyes blinking in demand. Great, back to work. From 5AM to 1PM, my vision got to the point where even if i could open my eyes, i had no control over which way either was pointing, i was struggling to talk properly and movement in general was become more difficult. I decided to wait it out until my appointment the next day.
As soon as i sat in the chair, i was told this is not thyroid related and i need to go to Leeds General Infirmary(LGI) straight away. I was diagnosed with another autoimmune condition, called, Myasthenia Gravis. Without going into a huge amount of detail, it is a muscular issue, that affects signals from your brain, telling your body what to do.
This all happened around a week before the second covid lockdown started in the UK, so as you can imagine, the LGI was in shambles. I was initially given the name of the condition, on a scrap of paper and told to google it.
Over the next month i was stuck in hospital, with little to no information, given about 16 pills, 3 times a day, sent to every corner of the hospital for different scans and tests, one involving electrical probes around my eyesocket, and no explanation as to what was going on. The week before christmas, I'd had enough and told my consultant that im discharging myself unless somebody tells me what the hell is going on and if im ever going to be able to see properly again!
He agreed the next day he would make time to come and explain everything properly.
Finally.
Around 4AM that morning i was told that my most recent covid swab had come back positive and that i needed to be 'isolated' This meant 1 room, no bathroom, no contact for, at that point, an indefinate period of time. And more importantly to me, no explanation to what was happening to me besides the worst case scenarios prescribed by Dr Google.
After 2 days, of countless more covid swabs, no covid symptoms and a visit from the CDC, i was told it must have been a false positive and set free. So the day before chritmas eve, the consultant finally came around to fill me in on what the fuck was happening to me.
I introduced myself to pedal building, during the first wave of covid, because like everybody else i was stuck at home with bugger all else to do. With zero background knowledge, and zero clue what i was getting myself into, i bought a kit from 'Fuzzdogg pedals'. A Dr Q clone.
After spending a weekend throwing solder at it like Super Mario on a flower power high, i made an absolute bollocks of it. 80% of the time is sounded like frying bacon, 15% it was silent, but that glorious 5% of the time it worked, it Quacked!
I was more than happy to sit for half an hour proding and poking until it worked just to get a couple minutes of quacky goodness. I was hooked! I quickly found out about vero boards and moved from PCB kits to vero straight away.
It was around this time i started to get ill. I was already under treatment for an over active thyroid, which can affect vision, and taking immunosuppresants, and was working as a manager at Subway, (cool AF, i know😑) and at the point where i was confident enough to sell some pedals here and there to friends and family, but no where near ready, or even considering trying to take it a thing.
So, i was at work mid week, and noticed i kept getting short bouts of double vision. Assuming it was thyroid related, and coincidentally i already had a schedualed appointment on the friday, i chose to ignore it and carried on working. By the evening, i could barely open my eyes and seemed to have little control over movement of my right eye. Panicking slightly, i had one more shift to get through, then doctors on Friday.
I woke up the next day, regular singular vision and both eyes blinking in demand. Great, back to work. From 5AM to 1PM, my vision got to the point where even if i could open my eyes, i had no control over which way either was pointing, i was struggling to talk properly and movement in general was become more difficult. I decided to wait it out until my appointment the next day.
As soon as i sat in the chair, i was told this is not thyroid related and i need to go to Leeds General Infirmary(LGI) straight away. I was diagnosed with another autoimmune condition, called, Myasthenia Gravis. Without going into a huge amount of detail, it is a muscular issue, that affects signals from your brain, telling your body what to do.
This all happened around a week before the second covid lockdown started in the UK, so as you can imagine, the LGI was in shambles. I was initially given the name of the condition, on a scrap of paper and told to google it.
Over the next month i was stuck in hospital, with little to no information, given about 16 pills, 3 times a day, sent to every corner of the hospital for different scans and tests, one involving electrical probes around my eyesocket, and no explanation as to what was going on. The week before christmas, I'd had enough and told my consultant that im discharging myself unless somebody tells me what the hell is going on and if im ever going to be able to see properly again!
He agreed the next day he would make time to come and explain everything properly.
Finally.
Around 4AM that morning i was told that my most recent covid swab had come back positive and that i needed to be 'isolated' This meant 1 room, no bathroom, no contact for, at that point, an indefinate period of time. And more importantly to me, no explanation to what was happening to me besides the worst case scenarios prescribed by Dr Google.
After 2 days, of countless more covid swabs, no covid symptoms and a visit from the CDC, i was told it must have been a false positive and set free. So the day before chritmas eve, the consultant finally came around to fill me in on what the fuck was happening to me.
I just accidentally deleted about 500 words from this so thats all you're getting for now.
Part 2 coming soon...
