The meaning of ’Halves’ here is dual - as it concerns the 2 Modes - Subharmonic and Overtone, as well as the two hemispheres of the Tone and Sensitivity controls.
Controls - Level, Tone, Sensitivity, Mode : SB (Subharmonic) / OT (Overtone).
As per the full name of this Fuzz - it is incredibly sensitive - and in particular for the Subharmonic Mode - and very much needs to be the first thing your guitar hits in the pedal-chain. The two sides are really quite different. The Subharmonic ...
So it’s been quite a while since I last covered this subject - indeed you have to go back to a August 2018 feature, which covered just 6 pedals. And where the then mentioned 770 Circuits seems to have wholly gone to ground in the interim, and there is no sign of its Komparator Trem-Fuzz anywhere anymore!
This time around I cast a slightly wider net - do note that these are a mix of LFO-assisted - therefore more Trem-Fuzz, and more natural feedback fuzz-oscillation. Essentially these are are...
You very rarely see a Tremolo pedal without a Rate / Speed function - yet here we have exactly one such variant.
As Tremolos go this is about as simple as it gets, with just 3 simple controls at your command :
Controls - Level, Depth, Shape : Sine > Square Wave.
I can’t help thinking that this pedal could do with one or two more controls. As it is, it’s a really cool effect - but really very one note - as all you can really do here is vary the intensity of the effect.
You can ...
Lastgasp’s Octavella Upper Octave Fuzz is well known for its fantastic and complex full fat searing texture. It has so much sear on tap in fact - that you need to be very careful in particularly how you deploy the Gain and Feedback Knobs - if you ride those too high you get a very obvious feedback ’whistle’ which for me I was able to dial out for my perfect settings.
You’re basically tuning the Gain and Feedback knobs in tandem - making micro-adjustments to ensure that you don’t get any ...
An interesting fact is that this collaboration almost happened several years ago, but evidently the timing wasn’t right then for various reasons. This time around though there was an added ingredient in the mix - ’Yours Truly!’ - and I was somewhat instrumental in bringing the two sides together and finally making this happen!
It’s great news for us Brits - as these Lastgasp Art Laboratories Pedals have always been somewhat beyond our reach until now.
I obviously recently covered my 9 ...
As mentioned previously - I meant to feature Lastgasp Art Laboratories (LAL / Lastgasp) quite a while back, but access to pedals from the UK has been rather limited, and most of these therefore fairly hard to come by! I detailed how there were only two properly active current dealers that had most of the range in stock - my good friend Andy Ebsen’s Effekt Boutique in Germany, and Perfect Circuit in the USA. I also was instrumental in getting Joe’s Pedals’ Joe Light to connect with Lastgasp’s ...
So scanning through this month it seems to have been mostly about Guitar / Pedal Shows, Japanese Pedals, and Pedals Delayed and Missing in the Post!
The Guitar Shows have been pretty fast and furious for March - with two of the most significant ones of the year, along with a fledgling grassroots one : The Guitar Show (Cranmore Park - Birmingham / Shirley), London Synth & Pedal Expo (Studio 9294, Hackney Wick, London), The Alternative Guitar Show (The Fighting Cocks, Kingston).
I of ...
I have quite a number of Super Fuzzes in the collection by now - and this Lastgasp Art Laboratories variant is another wonderful take on that format - with some quite distinct circuit differences - but most importantly it has all the flavour - and those fantastic blooming and percolating waves of harmonic fuzz.
The circuit topology is somewhat different to the norm - being composed of a mix of C1815 Transistors and JRC4558DD opamp. I’m not particularly familiar with the C1815’s, but ...
So this has been on the cards for a long while - I’ve had Lastgasp Art Laboratories on the list for a roundup for a really long time now. I had been intending to acquire a few of its pedals for a while - but they’ve never been particularly easily accessible from within the UK.
There are currently just 2 dealers worldwide who have most of the range in stock - Perfect Circuit in the USA, and my friend Andy Ebsen’s Effekt Boutique in Germany - where indeed I acquired my first two Lastgasp ...
Andy Ebsen’s Effekt Boutique has been one of my own essential pedal reference and resource website for many years now. Andy is so smart with his curation and pedal selection - that there are several pedals there that just cannot easily be found elsewhere if at all. I regularly check in on Effekt-Boutique.de several times a week - just to see what smart pedal choices Andy has most recently unearthed!
Over the years I have acquired a fair few pedals from Effekt Boutique - obviously...