Engineers and musicians north of Los Angeles.

Decibel Eleven — shortened to DB-11 on its products and to Decibel 11 in its web address — makes power supplies and effects switchers for guitarists’ pedalboards. It is not a stand-alone company. Its website describes it as “a division of MYE, Inc.,” which it calls an OEM/ODM electronics design and manufacturing company based in Southern California. Premier Guitar, reporting a product launch in September 2014, gave the parent’s name as MYE Entertainment Inc., and the brand’s current contact page lists the business as MYE Technologies in Valencia, California. In 2012 the company gave its address as Stevenson Ranch, also in the Santa Clarita Valley north of Los Angeles.

The company does not name its founders. Its website has said since 2012 that Decibel Eleven was “founded by engineers and professional musicians obsessed with sound quality,” with “over 30 years of innovative electronics design and manufacturing experience” between them. The person it puts forward is Tony Garcia, named as Decibel Eleven president in the company’s first press release, dated 24 April 2012, and as president and chief executive on its 2016 team page, which describes him as an entrepreneur, inventor and musician who had “launched several successful companies.”

The same team page sets out the brand’s pedigree. Its head of product development, Chris Hern, an electrical engineer, had worked at Alesis, Digital Music and Event Electronics and spent “a total of 15 years with Voodoo Labs,” the company said. Its industrial design director, Rich Spindel, had worked since 1985 for Dolby Labs, DTS, Gibson Audio Labs, Oberheim ECC, Alesis, Line 6 and Marantz, among others. On that basis Decibel Eleven says products developed by its engineers include designs for Alesis, Voodoo Lab, Gibson Audio Labs, Line 6, Event Electronics and American DJ. Those are the company’s own claims; it does not name the individual products, and neither do we.

Hot Stone power first, then switching.

The first products were power supplies. On 24 April 2012 Decibel Eleven introduced the Hot Stone isolated DC power supplies for guitar-effects pedals — three models, the company’s 2012 website shows: the Hot Stone Deluxe, HC and SM. Each used a toroidal transformer and isolated, short-circuit-protected outputs, meant to stop hum and interaction between pedals, and each carried a five-year warranty. “As musicians obsessed with sound quality, and value, we wanted to create products that empower every performance,” Garcia said in the release.

Switching followed. The company’s news page lists the Split Personality amp switcher in July 2012, the Pedal Palette in February 2013, the Loop Expander in January 2014 and the Dirt Clod overdrive in August 2014; its manuals add the Switch Dr. MIDI controller and loop switcher, dated 2013, and the Time After Time analog delay, dated 2016. In February 2013 Decibel Eleven announced that the Pedal Palette had been named a Premier Guitar NAMM 2013 Editors’ Pick. The company calls it “the first and only analog loop bypass switcher, router, and mixer” able to swap the order of pedals instantly while running a parallel mix bus; it has four relay true-bypass loops and stores 128 presets.

In September 2014 Premier Guitar reported the release of the Hot Stone Deluxe and the smaller Hot Stone SMD; the support page now separates the original grey-enclosure Deluxe from a dual-voltage version. Today’s Deluxe has eight isolated outputs among ten outlets, 1,600 milliamps in total, a selectable 120- or 230-volt input for touring, and two variable outputs that the company says simulate “used carbon batteries” for transistor fuzz, all in a chassis of 2 mm steel. The Switch Dr. stores 128 presets that can send MIDI program changes on three channels while switching up to four true-bypass loops and three amp functions. Premier Guitar reviewed the Dirt Clod in February 2016 at a street price of $189, praising “organic sounds that range from impressively transparent boosts and glassy overdrives to thick blues and mean hard-rock tones.”

Pedalboard and pedal-power makers.

A pedalboard gives effects pedals a fixed home and needs clean power and routing. The makers here are known for different parts of it: frames, isolated power and switching.

Some are best known for the frame. Pedaltrain calls itself an independent accessory maker based in Nashville, founded in 1999 as a one-man start-up, with a European joint venture in Belgium. RockBoard belongs to Warwick GmbH & Co. Music Equipment KG of Markneukirchen, Germany, the company named in its website’s imprint. Temple Audio Design, of Warman, Saskatchewan, in Canada, sells the Templeboard and its quick-release pedal mounting system.

Others are best known for power. Truetone started as Visual Sound, which its founder, Bob Weil, launched at the NAMM show in 1995; it introduced the 1 SPOT adapter, took the Truetone name in 2015, is based in Spring Hill, Tennessee, and says it is still family owned. CIOKS was founded in Copenhagen in 1991 by Poul Ciok, who, the company says, still runs it; it is based today in Køge, Denmark, and says its power supplies are made in-house by a sister company in Poland.

Two Californian firms make both power and switching. Voodoo Lab, of Santa Rosa, says it has designed electronics for musicians since 1986. Decibel Eleven, of Valencia, launched its Hot Stone power supplies in 2012; it is a division of the electronics maker MYE, which it says has production facilities in the USA and abroad.

This guide sets out what can be checked about each brand — who founded it, who owns it, and what it says about where its products are made — and marks clearly what rests only on the company’s own word.

Made, it says, in the USA and abroad.

On where its products are made, Decibel Eleven says only that MYE has “state-of-the-art production facilities in the USA and abroad” — wording that has not changed since 2012. We found no country of origin for any individual product on its website, in seven of its PDF manuals or in the Premier Guitar coverage we checked, so we make no claim about it. In 2012 the company also described MYE as a maker of audio and visual products for professional music, commercial fitness, restaurants and hospitality.

In October 2026 the website still sells the Hot Stone SMD, the Switch Dr. and the Dirt Clod at “super sale” prices marked “while supplies last,” while the Hot Stone Deluxe and the Pedal Palette are listed as sold out; its copyright line runs to 2019. We draw no conclusion from that about the company’s plans. Nor did we find published brand guidelines, colours or typefaces; the DB-11 monogram and the Hot Stone wordmark are not reproduced here.

For a design guide, Decibel Eleven shows how an engineering house can build a small musician-facing brand on the plain virtues of power and switching — isolation, steel cases, long warranties — rather than on a founder’s story. Compare Voodoo Lab, where, the company says, its head of product development spent fifteen years, and Strymon, whose current-hungry pedals the Hot Stone outputs were specified to power. For this guide we use amp black, steel grey and a hot-stone ember with a condensed sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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