There’s been quite a lot of nonsense spouted and written about this recent legal skirmish - which amounts to massive judicial and jurisdictional overreach by Fender’s European Lawyers Bird & Bird.

’Standing, Default Judgement and Jurisdiction’

Essentially Fender won a Regional Dusseldorf court case against a Chinese Importer of essentially Counterfeit Stratocaster Guitars. Said entity had no corporate assets in Europe, failed to turn up to court, and Fender was awarded a win by default ...

This is my 3rd Lovetone Big Cheese derivative to date, and the most expansive / granular of the 3, first was the somewhat welter-weight JHS Cheese Ball, which sounds positively anaemic when compared to either of the Thorpy FX Field Marshal or this Gigahearts Small Cheese.

Both the latter ones are quite a bit more vibrant and visceral - possibly with the Small Cheese MK2 having just a little more in the engine room - that one can get ridiculously loud - just as I like it!

I’ve always ...

I’m a little late with this as Meris held back the press release until launch - so I was only provided with the details at the same time as everyone else - which is really rather unusual. I had a number of other projects already on the go - and so I’m a couple days late with this!

As always - each Meris device delivers way beyond its specific core category, its Enzo X for instance is almost as much a multi-modulator as it is a synth - and here we have lots of extras thrown into the mix - ...

I’m quite proud of my visual here which has the new Mini Fumble Boost encased in a Kansas City Chiefs helmet - for somewhat obvious reasons! While I am a little mystified that there would be such a high demand for the ’wrong!’ Boost - I’m sure you’re all familiar with the John Mayer ’Box It Later’ boost mixup / saga.

I have 2 versions of the NOTADÜMBLË - the JHS one, and the Blammo Compact TNYDÜMBLË editions - as pictured below. I actually quite like the BBC-1 boost, but I have other boosts...

I recall the original Core Series very well - and picked up those 4 original compacts - per the below original range visual. You had the Edge, ODI, Rail, and ROUS (per bottom row of visual) - where 3 of those have now been revived and enhanced.

Pettyjohn then did a number of additional very limited small batch custom compact editions - which covered most of the same territory as these 11 new editions. I feel a couple of these might be brand new - certainly the Moss X Fuzz. ...

I’ve finally picked up a Hotone Verbera (normally $299 / £249), where I paid £229 at Andertons - super good value, and I’ve been incredibly impressed right from the start. The control interface is mostly pretty intuitive - and the value of this pedal is hard to beat. It could even be my favourite Reverb workstation to-date - but it’s a little early to call - I normally give it at least a few months!

It’s been a long time coming - and has been held off for quite a few months by a combination...

I can’t explain why I’m so late to the Angel Teeth - it’s been on my wishlist for a while (years!). I actively collect evolved and extended range DOD250’s - so this one was always going to be a perfect fit for me. And indeed - I have been meaning to get it for a while - I always expected to pick one of these up at one of the guitar shows - but Gwion’s batch schedule didn’t seem to sync up with my specific pedal-chasing needs.

I was expecting to review the Spectral Fire and Micro Mountain ...

After my earlier Dirty Birdy overview article - where I complained of the seemingly excessive international shipping fees. The very genial Pete from Airline Guitars reached out to me and asked me for advice on what the shipping costs to the UK should be. I shared with him the shipping costs of the last 4 pedals I had acquired from North America - where those ranged from around $25 to $50 - with the median values mostly around the $50 mark.

Shortly afterwards Pete replied that they had ...

Pictured above are the early-bird arrivals for the event, of course main man Doug, American adventurer Nolen, Doug’s friend Yas (pub liaison), and the pub’s lawyer Jason - who’s early riffing was so impressive - that no one wanted to go after him! All of us were in there by around noon!

This was my first time in Hanwell - thank the powers above for the Elizabeth Line - otherwise it would have been tricky to get to! Hanwell is the western-most town in the borough of Ealing I believe. The ...