This article was obviously inspired by last Friday’s That Pedal Show (TPS) episode with similar title. In watching that I thought - hang on a minute - I have all these pedals, with the Chase Bliss Audio Automatone Preamp MKII the most recently added. So before the episode - 3 were already in my pedal-chain - the Chase Bliss Audio Brothers Analog Gainstage since it first came out, the relatively recent Jackson Audio Golden Boy, and of course my brand new Automatone Preamp MKII.

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It brings me great pleasure to be able to showcase more of the great work of my good friend Sof from Expresso FX - whom I frequently refer to as the ’Transistor Charmer / Whisperer’. Sof was one of my first significant pedal builder contacts - and it seems fitting that I’m featuring him again - almost exactly a year on from my first full overview of his Expresso FX Range.

I had acquired and lived long-term with 4 of Sof’s pedals before I felt I was sufficiently ...

July has largely been a very decent month for me and culminated with the arrival of my twin new Expresso FX Dual Custom Fuzzes and my annual white whale as such - the Chase Bliss Audio Automatone Preamp MKII on this occasion.

It looks like 4 pedals failed to get over the line within the appointed time period - the longest-ranging of which is my Evil Pumpkin Modded DS-1 - which has been en-route from Kiev since June 12th and which I surely hoped should have landed by now.

My ...

This article was another triggered by a number of recent ’Best Chorus Pedals’ posts out on other sites - which I didn’t feel adequately covered this category. Initially I didn’t used to be that much into Chorus - but being a huge Prince, Nirvana, The Police and The Cure fan amongst others - the Chorus was always going to feature there in the tonal reference library - and besides, I soon discovered how to do all kinds of other cool things with Chorus - for instance just ...

I’ve come across a lot of queries about these two on various message boards and pedal groups, while no one yet seems to have taken it upon themselves to do a proper detailed head-to-head comparison. I myself had to do this same due diligence a while back - so I thought I would put that process into pictures and words so that it might help others who are having the same deliberation.

These are the only two in their category which share the same sort of footprint - and they’...

So this post came about due to my sometimes confusion between Soft and Hard Clipping, Symmetrical and Asymmetrical Clipping and the individual clipping characteristics of different Diodes. In my earliest pedal years I took the type of Diode to be the essential constituent of the clipping degree and texture versus the actual circuit and diodes arrangement. Phrases like ’Soft Clipping Germanium’ also confused me for eons - as it’s actually the methodology which principally ...

My friends Pete and Matthias of Demon Pedals have been going for half a decade now - and are responsible for some of my favourite gain pedals - including of course the Kondo-Shifuku D-Style Overdrive (still my favourite Dumble!), Ganapati Dynamic Drive + Boost (Ganesha + Vahana), and Parvati Extended-Range Green Russian Style Muff Fuzz - all featured on my Demon Pedals Overview.

To mark this particular milestone and open up their brand to even more players - Pete and Matthias are ...

I was a little late to Matt Pasquerella’s Stomp Under Foot (SUF) superior range of mostly Big Muff Style Compact Enclosure Fuzz Replicas. Besides the original - Electro-Harmonix’ Mike Matthews, I consider Matt to be one of a trio of the leading proponents of the Muff sound - alongside Marc Ahlfs of Skreddy Pedals, and Matthew Holl of Wren and Cuff.

The first SUF pedal I properly encountered was the Dirt Preacher - courtesy of a Nick Jaffe demo - as below. I’m a huge ...

Following on from my recent piece on Steve Mac’s Pedalboard - I was intrigued enough by the Pete Cornish contingent within that to do further research in line with my own idiosyncrasies and preferences. I’ve noted previously that I somewhat dismissed Pete Cornish’s pedals as being something of an over-sized, over-priced 70’s anachronism (my sincerest apologies!). Referring largely then to the original tour-grade Grey Pro Series which festooned many a guitar legend’...

Readers of this blog should be aware by now of my love/hate relationship with Manual Wah pedals as I’ve often shared opinions on those. I’ve generally been a fan of Dunlop’s Mini CryBaby Wahs and acquired each of the CBM95 and CBM535Q Minis as and when they were released. I however had issues with those as most do - no indicator light initially - so often finding the signal-chain sounding decidedly odd as I forgot to switch off the wah at the end of the previous day’s ...