News

Readers of this blog will know that I’m a big fan of high gain / metal distortion, and have a fair few pedals in that category - in fact I have 4 permanent slots in my pedal-chain which are dedicated to high gain (#24-#27). The two medium-sized slots (#25,#26) have pretty much been permanently occupied by the Empress Heavy and MI Effects Megalith Delta for the longest time now (even though I have great rotation alternatives here too) - while there is quite a lot of rotation on my 2 other ...

In advance of the arrival of the OD-200 I thought it would be good to do an overview of Boss’s own various Drive and Distortion pedals. In my recent ’Yellow Means OverDrive’ feature I covered off all of those particular Boss pedals, so this article is at the other end of the scale of gain - the High Gain and Metal Distortions. I will then follow up with a 3rd article covering those drives and distortions that sit between these and the 9 OverDrive pedals covered already.

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Electro-Harmonix has introduced a Nano version of its Operation Overlord Overdrive which manages to preserve most of that larger pedal’s functionality / feature set while there obviously have to be some compromises and concessions - and we loose the Stereo component of the original, as well as the Boost Level control and second Boost footswitch. I’m not sure why EHX hasn’t gotten onboard with the dual-footswitch compact enclosure style which is really fairly common nowadays - ...

I have mentioned several times on this blog - my surprise that PRS did not offer direct replacement locking tuners for its SE Line of guitars - which have been in production now since 2005. The current Core Line Phase II/III tuners have a much wider barrel/bore which could not be accommodated by the existing narrower tuner holes of the SE’s without significant alterations (drilling!).

Players like myself have had to buy locking tuners from different brands that fit the SE’s...

So Source Audio has made a slightly different move to the one I and a few others expected - I thought we might get a 12+ Mode Modulation Workstation next - following on from the Nemesis and Ventris - and continuing the lineage much like Strymon’s TimeLine, BigSky and Mobius, and Boss’s DD-500, RV-500 and MD-500.

But Source Audio have decided to do a combination of the Nemesis and Ventris into the same format - giving you 5 Delay Modes from the Nemesis and 7 Reverb Modes ...

This feature was inspired by a few conversations I had at the recent Islington / London UK Guitar Show where I encountered a number of exhibitors throughout the day in varying states of repair and alertness. It recalled my advertising agency days where and when I attended numerous trade shows for extended periods all around Europe - including also some more recent events escapades. I promised I would write up this handy guide to help others benefit from my acquired tips and tricks from those ...

I’ve featured MXR quite a lot on this site over the years, but bizarrely and somewhat inexplicably to date have only acquired one of those numerous pedals - the Mini Phase 95, actually with the Brown Acid it makes 2! And this just after my fairly recent acquisition of the Pigdog Juju Fuzz - which also happens to be a TB MKIII style fuzz - I think I now have a nicely rounded quartet of MKIII’s with room for a couple more no doubt. Of course I’m an avowed fuzz fan, and I have ...

When I did my recent Aleks K Production Range Overview I had obviously had my 2 favourite Aleks K pedals in the chain for a while - the Maple Leaf Royal Drive/Distortion and Red Scorpion 2 Mega Distortion. I noted how there was a sort of shared family tonal character between the pedals - with a pervasive smooth, long-sustaining musicality with a definite hint of compression.

I reaffirmed my choices as to which were my favourites and why, and indicated I would like to add the Honey Moon...

Anyone who’s read this blog will be very aware that I’m a fan of the Boss Katana amps - I’ve had the now series 1 KT-100 since it first came out as my left-hand amp in my stereo rig, and had already decided that I would be transitioning to the Katana Artist - with its better speaker and it’s various included extras - amongst them the forward-facing control panel.

Now the MKII range has come out and it has in effect frog-leaped over the Artist in terms of overall...

It appears that every other JHS release seems to court some kind of controversy. And this latest compact format replica of the famous Lovetone Big Cheese from 1995/6 has provoked the ire of Lovetone co-founder and engineer Dan Coggins - currently associated with ThorpyFX. I need to get better up to speed on what the full story is, but this is of course far from the first compact format replica of said Big Cheese. The Lovetone originals ceased production around 2001, and there have been dozens ...