The XO Variable Crossover essentially allows you to combine the Lower Frequencies of one pedal with the Higher Frequencies of another - blend them in parallel, and create entirely new textures and tones through that specific pedal combination - and by varying the centre point / mix of each side.

So you have in effect a High Pass Filter on the Right Channel - which shaves off all Lower Frequencies beyond / below the Threshold / Centre Point you set on the Crossover Frequency Knob, and the ...

Where the Birmingham Show was a little sprawling and chaotic for me, I very much felt more at home at the Studio 9294 venue for this year’s London Synth and Pedal Expo. As Media Partner for the show, the second year in a row, I was of course in for the entirety of both the day, and actually in very early in particular on the Sunday.

I thoroughly enjoyed the two days -I love having the #90 Bar & Kitchen next door - for some very decent lunches - superb burger on the first day, and Sunday...

And so to what is often my favourite category - the many wonderful flavours of fuzz - and we have some hugely innovative pedals in the selection this year - one of these may even be my pedal of the year!

So there are 24 in this year’s selection - where I’m just missing the Collision Devices TARS, Fender Shields Blender, JAM Pedals Octaurus, KMA Machines Mandrake, Reeves Electro Facet IZ, and Unsound Circuitry Kato Glitch Fuzz - where I will attempt to add most of those to the reference ...

Another busy month - doubly busy as I was working on the new website and commercial plans for the most part on top of the normal hectic schedule. Inevitably there are a few pedals that get moved into October - as I just ran out of time - still plenty of coverage. October is going to be incredibly hectic as I’m expecting a lot of incoming pedals - so a lot of review work to complete and a couple more sizeable projects.

I feel the website launch went mostly very well and was universally well ...

What we have on the surface here is two specialist 4-knob overdrives which in turn might lead some to believe that there was some degree of similarity between them, while that could not be further from the truth.

Each of David Greeves’ overdrives is infused with a certain flavour and character, where those two drives really could not be more different. You can match them for gain and level to a degree, but their EQ’s are quite different, and more importantly their core characters, textures ...

WARNING! This post is massive, and will probably crash your mobile device! Best accessed via Desktop or Laptop!

Last time I did this exercise I featured just 9 companies in my cover shot, and covered 57 overall - with just videos for the top 9.

While this time around I’ve doubled down - where there are 27 companies in the cover shot and 105 overall! And circa half of those are accompanied by a video - which is a lot! I first cover the 27 Leading Lights group, and then the 78 brands in ...

July was punctuated by two very significant events - Doug Tolley’s Witney Pedal Party on July 1st, and Phil Steere’s Brighton Guitar Show and FX Expo on July 15th - where I covered both of those in fine detail. Both were seminal events for different reasons, and while we were relatively few at Witney - we got to witness a truly legendary performance by David Rainger - which doubled up as about the best pedal demo I’ve yet / ever experienced - David was truly on fire - and the audience - we ...

David would have liked to have made more of the Hybrid edition of the Focus Fuzz - but parts scarcity got in the way of that so that is totally officially discontinued. And the plan here was to make a version as close in feel and dynamics to the original - retaining all those parts that made the original version such a special experience.

By dint of the changes in parts :

Original Hybrid Edition had 2 x BC107B Silicon + 1 x MP38A Germanium Transistors
The New All-Silicon Edition has 2 x ...

Like most I believe - I had a wonderful time at the recent Brighton Guitar Show and Pedal Expo - where I spent 97% of my time in the Pedal Room, with just brief excursions out to the Hamstead Soundworks and Timber Tones stands in the main Guitars Room.

I pretty much managed to get to the vast majority of stands I intended to - but there are always some casualties as time is a finite commodity! And I was there actually from just after eight until gone 17:30 - one of the very last to leave - ...