Our First Guitar Show — What Happened When Drunk Beaver Went to Poland Guitar Fest 2026
Two pedalboards. One amp. A vintage Exar handed to me by a customer. Jamie Stillman of EarthQuaker Devices testing our gear. Here's what happened at PGF 2026. 🦫
By Sunday evening I couldn't speak 🤐. Two days of explaining the difference between Bat and Bat Cold War for the thirtieth time, demonstrating signal chains, and — somewhere in there — accidentally disconnecting my own amp in front of Jamie Stillman of EarthQuaker Devices.
My voice was gone. My feet hurt. And I was already thinking about how to make the booth even better next time. 🦫
That was my first show with me actually standing behind a Drunk Beaver booth. For the last three years, Palf has carried our flag at the Paris Guitar Show, and I'm grateful for it. I've seen the photos, watched the videos, heard the stories. But I'd never been at one myself. PGF 2026 changed that.
Poland Guitar Fest 2026, Krakow, April 25–26, in a beautiful loft venue that — as Andy from Sitek told me — used to be a vodka factory. I can confirm it had that exact kind of character: raw, spacious, full of interesting corners. A fitting place for a gathering of people who build and play interesting things.
I took a full week off from my regular job as a software engineer to prepare. That should tell you how seriously I took this 😎.
Two Pedalboards, One Amp, and a Lot of Hand-Soldered Cables
I built two complete pedalboards from scratch. Custom 3D-printed side rails with 2020 aluminum profiles. A Harley Benton power bank integrated into the chassis itself. A custom 3D-printed mounting system — because I genuinely cannot stand velcro 🦫. And every single patch cable soldered by hand.
Setup 1 ran through a Boss Waza Craft Tuner (with its switchable buffer — important for the Germanium fuzzes on the board), then into Hoverla, Taras Bulba MK2, Secret Sauce, The Forest Song, Olbia, and Bloom on the bottom row. The upper row had Disambiguation 2, Seattle Driver, Fat Bat, Bat, Bat Cold War (I brought both deliberately — people always ask what the difference is, and the answer is best given with a guitar in your hands), Jellyfish, and Tornado MK2.
Signal went into our modded Marshall Origin 5 — combo converted to a head, pushed toward Plexi territory, with a custom Drunk Beaver faceplate on it — then out through a Two Notes Captor X. Main guitar was a Fender MIM Deluxe Strat HSS 🎸.
Setup 2 was the XR series showcase, and the concept was different. Boss TU-2, XR CP-1 Cherry Picker (our compressor prototype, hopefully landing in June), XR OD-1 OverDrive, Inglorious Bastard, Kavun MOS Drive, Vatra, XR SF-1 Sustain Filter, XR MD-1 Metal Mind (another prototype, distortion — more on this shortly), XR MM-1 Moon Metal, XR EM-1 Echo Machine. Then Trainer TS-15 MK2 and TS-100 acting as preamps, feeding a Two Notes Opus with just cabinet simulation and a touch of reverb.
The idea was to show what happens when you use our preamp pedals as actual preamps — no traditional amp in the chain. Guitar was a Harley Benton SC-450 Plus with Tone Rider Alnico 2/5 pickups. A lot of people were genuinely surprised by how good it sounded 🤘.
A lot of people assume the only difference between TS-15 and TS-100 is the mids EQ and the extra boost on the TS-100 — but they actually have quite different character, and visitors picked up on that immediately once both were in the chain side by side.
The Booth Itself
The booth itself had a custom-sewn textile banner skirt and a roll-up banner (I designed both), plus the usual things we include with every order: stickers, our business card PCBs — yes, an actual PCB you can build into a boost pedal — and guitar picks. Several visitors were genuinely astonished that the business card was buildable. A few promised to actually build it. I hope they do 🔧.
And on the table — two knitted beavers 🦫🦫. One was sent to me by my mom from Ukraine a few years ago. The other was made by our older daughter. They guarded the booth all weekend.
The drawing that stayed on the stand both days
One of our returning customers came on the first day with his daughter, Asia. She arrived wearing a Drunk Beaver t-shirt. She brought a hand-drawn portrait of our logo — carefully drawn, and signed for me on the back. We put it on the stand immediately, and it stayed there for both days.
She also brought a cardboard electric guitar she'd made for people to sign. I left my signature there too.
We gave her a small present from us. It felt like the right thing to do, though honestly no gift could match the gesture she made. 🙏
Leon — a customer I'd chatted with online a few times but never met in person — came by on Day 1 and handed me a vintage Exar TD-02 Turbo Overdrive. Just like that. I wasn't expecting it at all.
You go to a show to share what you've made, and somehow the community finds ways to give something back. I've been building pedals for a long time. That weekend reminded me exactly who I'm building them for.
The People — The Real Reason to Do a Show
There are conversations you simply cannot have through Instagram comments or an online store chat. A show is different. Let me explain what happened over the weekend, more or less in the order it happened.
It actually started on Friday evening, before doors opened. Setup day brings the exhibitors into the same room with no visitors yet — which turned out to be the perfect window to finally meet, in person, a bunch of people I'd known online for years but never IRL: Dean from Evening Star Devices, Radim of Red Ant, folks from Mad Professor, Piotr Kozub, and Artur and the team from Brudne Brzmienie. Putting faces to usernames is its own small joy 🤝.
About Artur — they did stop by the booth during the show too, but they were short on time and Artur himself didn't get a proper session with the gear, though both of his teammates did and seemed to enjoy it. He's officially in debt. We'll collect next time he's in Wrocław, Artur 😉.
Adrian from Tone Charm Audio — great conversation about gear and the business of building pedals in the current climate. The kind of talk that you can only have with someone doing the same thing you're doing.
Hania and Andy Sitek — we tried each other's pedals and talked through setup improvements. We already knew before the show that we share a mutual friend: Stefan of Guitar Pedal X. Stefan was happy to hear Andy and I had finally met in person. (Stefan, if you're reading this — we missed you. Hope to see you at PGF 2027.)
Ewa from Dressed in Black played through both setups and left with a new XR pedal for demos as well. She sounded great on both boards, which was nice to witness.
After Day 1 closed, a chunk of us ended up at the after-show concert. That's where I finally met Mario of TWS — we'd never actually crossed paths before, and we ended up having long conversations in the smoking area between sets. That's where the conversations went deeper than they would have at a booth visit. Community, the state of the pedal market, what it means to run a small brand in 2026. Good stuff.
Day 2 opened quietly. Bazok swung by first thing in the morning, before the crowd arrived — a quiet window which is the best time to actually try gear. He played through several of our pedals and took one home for demo content. Keep an eye on that channel 📺.
Later that morning, Jamie Stillman and Julie Robbins of EarthQuaker Devices came by and tried both boards. I'm a huge fan of Jamie's work — EQD has always been a reference point for me in terms of building a brand with real character. Having him play through our pedals was meaningful on a level that's hard to articulate without sounding like a fanboy, which I absolutely am 🤘.
The room was extremely loud at that point, which made for a challenging listen, and then Setup 1's signal disappeared completely. By the time Jamie and Julie moved on, I was almost starting to panic 😅. Egor from the PGF crew jumped in and helped me debug, working backward through the signal chain until we found it: I had accidentally disconnected the Captor X's power supply. Fifteen minutes of troubleshooting for a loose cable 🤦. (Fun fact: Egor is Ukrainian too — originally from Donetsk. Small world 🇺🇦.)
Despite the chaos, Jamie liked quite a few of our pedals. His favourites were Bloom and XR Moon Metal. We made them a small present before they left. I'm still smiling about the whole thing.
Ksantyp showed up later on Day 2, which I genuinely wasn't expecting — he'd told me earlier he wouldn't make it. He came through with a camera and filmed our stand as part of his PGF video.
And throughout the whole weekend, my booth neighbour was David of David Tuba Guitar Straps — genuinely the best possible neighbour, because guitar straps are not loud 😄. He was kind, interesting company, and our corner of the hall felt like a good place to be.
What People Played — and What Surprised Me
The biggest unexpected story of the weekend? Modulation.
I build a lot of dirt pedals. Drunk Beaver is probably best known for fuzz and drive. But the Jellyfish and Tornado MK2 drew crowd after crowd. One couple had tried the Walrus Julia at a dealer's stand earlier in the day. They came to ours, played the Jellyfish, and said that for them it wasn't a contest 🥁.
A bass player wandered over and loved everything the modulation pedals could do. Several people asked if the modulation units were stereo — they're not currently, and I noted that question more than once.
Disambiguation 2 was the immediate favourite for anyone who plays heavy music. No hesitation.
Bat and Bat Cold War both found their people — the side-by-side comparison answered questions better than any product description ever could. Fat Bat had fans too.
Secret Sauce attracted a specific kind of person: someone who loves broken, lo-fi, unpredictable sounds. When those people found it, they stayed for a while.
Taras Bulba MK2 and Hoverla went over well with the vintage-minded crowd. The range of tones you can pull from Taras Bulba surprised people.
One demo I kept coming back to: Hoverla into Secret Sauce. The pickup simulator feature on Hoverla changes the character of the treble boost completely. I showed it to a lot of people and the reaction was consistent — wide eyes, then nodding 😎.
Seattle Driver found admirers for its octave option and the unusual fuzzy-distortion territory it can cover.
Each of our drive pedals found at least one person who landed on it as their favourite — The Forest Song, Bloom (also used as a fuzz by several players), Olbia, Kavun MOS Drive. That pattern actually reassured me. It means keeping the variety in the lineup makes sense. Different people hear things differently, and that's okay.
The Setup 2 Surprise — Preamp Pedals as Actual Preamps
Setup 2 and the TS preamp concept genuinely surprised people. On paper it was the more unusual board: no traditional amp, no Captor X, just the pedals doing the preamp work and the Two Notes Opus handling cabinet simulation with a little bit of room around it.
That made it very practical for the show. I could move from clean to pushed to heavy sounds without changing the whole chain, and visitors could hear what TS-15 MK2 and TS-100 do when they are treated as the main voice of the rig, not just another drive pedal in front of an amp.
The clean tones through the cab sim were warm and full. The driven tones were focused and musical. The concept worked well and proved to be a very useful setup. More than a few visitors asked whether the Harley Benton was really a Harley Benton 🤔.
Prototypes: Metal Mind & Cherry Picker
And the prototypes. XR MD-1 Metal Mind drew the most attention of anything on either board — it's a distortion, which always travels fast on a loud show floor. XR CP-1 Cherry Picker got quieter but very specific love from people who use compressors and know exactly what they're looking for.
Both are releasing soon. MD-1 probably first, Cherry Picker close behind — possibly at the same time. A few visitors were ready to buy the prototypes on the spot, which I had to decline: those single units were the only ones I'd made so far. Won't be long 🛠️.
That came from multiple people across both days. I'll take it.
On Day 1, there was an actual queue to try Setup 1. Almost everything available at the show was in stock and a number of people decided to buy on the spot — thank you, genuinely. And many more promised to come back to the online store. We're waiting for you 🦫🍺.
The Honest Part
This wasn't easy.
I took a full week off from my job to prepare. The pedalboards, the booth materials, the logistics — all of it needed time I didn't have while working.
My wife Viktoria came with me on Day 1, which made everything better. She left that evening to get back to our younger daughter — we'd left both kids with grandma, but it didn't go as planned, and a five-year-old needs a parent. I understood completely. It still added pressure.
Day 2 I was on my own. Manning both boards, talking to visitors, managing the booth solo, and then packing everything up at the end. By the time I was loading the car, my voice had given out. Not dramatically — it just wasn't really working anymore.
The room volume was a genuine challenge for the headphone-only setup on certain parts of both days. The ambient noise from guitars and amps across the hall made quiet listening difficult. We worked around it, but it took adaptation.
I didn't take nearly enough photos. I know. I was talking to people almost the entire time, which I'd argue is the better use of two days at a show — but future me would appreciate a few more pictures 📸.
Why We'll Do It Again — and Thank You
A lot of people who came to our booth on Saturday and Sunday had never heard of Drunk Beaver before. That alone tells me the show was necessary. We exist online, but online has its limits. You can't play a Jellyfish through Instagram 🎸.
The feedback we got — across both boards, both days — was consistent and specific. People knew what they liked and why. That's useful in a way that follower counts aren't.
Metal Mind and Cherry Picker are coming. The show accelerated my confidence about releasing both. I'll prioritize MD-1 first.
If PGF 2027 is announced, we'll almost certainly be there. We know more now. The booth will be better. Maybe we'll even take more photos 📷.
To every person who stopped by our stand: thank you. To everyone who picked up a pedal, played through either board, gave honest feedback, or asked a question I hadn't thought about — that's what makes this worth doing. To those who took something home: you made our first show feel like a success.
To Asia: the drawing now has a permanent exhibition at the workshop. Thank you.
To Leon, who handed me a vintage Exar TD-02 at the stand: I wasn't ready for that. Thank you 🙏.
If you missed us at PGF and want to explore the lineup, everything is in the store. The new XR series is there. Bat) and Bat Cold War are both there. The Jellyfish is there. And when MD-1 and CP-1 are ready, you'll be the first to know — keep an eye on Bazok, Ksantyp, Ewa and Brudne Brzmienie's channels too — they all left with our pedals or filmed at the booth, so demo videos are on the way.
Now go plug in and make some noise 🦫🍺.
