About Us

Rice Pedals was started by me, Nathan Rice, in early 2026. I have played instruments since I was 10 years old and guitar since age 13. I majored in physics and mathematics at the University of Kentucky, during which time I didn’t play much music. After graduating, I began teaching high school physics and calculus in Miami, FL, while working towards my masters degree in psychology (systems engineering) and slowly began getting back into playing instruments. In 2020, I moved to Dallas, TX and began seriously playing guitar again and have ever since. In Dallas, I did my masters degree in mathematics while working as a high school IB math, physics, and computer science teacher. I currently teach IB physics and AP computer science in Irving, TX.

Over the last few years of playing guitar regularly, I began to collect pedals, watch pedal videos, and try my best to learn how the circuits inside them worked. My focus in physics and math in undergrad and grad school was primarily on theory, so my practical electronic knowledge was limited. However, thanks to the fantastic videos (particularly from JHS), forums, books, and blogs created by pedal builders and enthusiasts, I decided to give it a try myself.

I wanted to try and build a few different pedals based on how my brain separates pedal function. The first three planned are a boost, a fuzz, and an overdrive. While each of these are effectively various types of gain, they each serve a distinct purpose and I wanted to spend time focusing on each one individually.

The Army of Frogs boost pedal is a relatively simple clean boost circuit, but served as a good starting place before applying the same design principles to more complex circuits. The next planned pedal is a fuzz pedal. This fuzz pedal, the Colony of Penguins, will also include an octave option, clipping type options, and additional tone controls.

My goal with each is to make something I’m proud of. As such, I have tried to source quality parts for each piece of these pedals, inside and out. In addition to physical build quality, each pedal is carefully biased based on the performance of individual transistors and components.