Where does Barkhausen get its name?

At the same time as I formed Barkhausen (as a band) I was also planning to start producing guitar pedals and/or Eurorack synthesizer modules. This enterprise was to be called Barkhausen Effects.

I’ve given up the idea of making electronic products. It’s hard to imagine how I could have made it a profitable venture in New Zealand, where there are enormous input tariffs on imported goods and the dollar is weak against foreign currencies. The price of my products would not have been remotely competitive.  I could have had them produced in China or somewhere where labour is cheap but ethically I couldn’t countenance that. And then there was the prospect of actually hand-building hundreds of objects, all that soldering and such. It would have taken up a huge amount of time and energy.

I enjoyed the journey but in the end I’d rather just make music.

The rest of this post (which was originally written in 2015) relates to Barkhausen Effects:

I was originally planning on calling this enterprise Vollgas Klang Effekte, which translates from the German as “full throttle sound effects”. It had that gruff (vulgar) Germanic ring to it, especially if you said it in a Heavy Metal-inflected sorta way. Despite it sounding good it was silly. That’s not a bad thing in itself, but I was looking for something that actually meant something to me. And I found it. More… Was ist das Barkhausen? ▸