Bondi Effects

Ashley grew up in Sydney and was living in the United States when the company started in a bedroom in 2012. He had learned to solder building robots, taken up guitar in his mid-teens, and made pedals for friends for years, but he did not design his own until late 2011. On a family holiday he drew the Sick As overdrive on a computer and built it when he got home. It was on the website within two weeks, and the first one sold in 2012. He was 18 when that first prototype went out. Someone at his local guitar shop recorded a demo that helped it spread, and selling about ten a month let him leave a day job. The Sick As was his take on the Klon Centaur, a circuit that was widely copied and rarely modified.

Anna Ashley, who had been in a band with him for several years, built alongside him. They were students with other jobs, making pedals in spare hours. He had named the company Bondi Effects with a return to Sydney in mind. In 2016 they moved the workshop back from the United States, set up in Sydney, and kept production small and hands-on instead of chasing large retail distribution.