News

May was the month that several things finally slotted into place - all my missing / presumed lost USA orders finally landed as did a few other pedals which had been somewhat lingering in the wild - so May delivered a pretty decent pedal yield overall in the end. I also got to be involved in a couple of exciting up-and-coming brands - Kuro Custom Audio of Italy and MidValleyFX of USA. I’ve already published a feature on the excellent Kuro Akuma Fiery Fuzz as featured on slot #5, and hope ...

It is well known by now that I’m a considerable fan of fuzz, but I do have hangups about impractical over-sized and unergonomically formatted pedals. This means I really don’t have an affinity for any of those original Tone Bender enclosures and the like - which are pretty much as long and as practical as frogman’s flippers for footwear. When fuzz pedals first emerged they were the very first effects pedals taken into use - and players only ever had a few effects pedals on ...

I was fortunate to come across a ringing endorsement of this brand new fuzz pedal on the Fuzztopia Facebook Group some days ago. The post appeared on the day of launch I believe (May 14th) and I was immediately struck by the the highly appealing geometric design of the enclosure (and sparkly green colour) - a little reminiscent of some of the cool Custom Beetronics stuff - but very much its own thing. The supposed visual turned out to be an excellent sounding demo video - which rounded off a ...

This post is to a large extent triggered by the recent launch of the new V2 Decibelics Angry Swede Distortion - with added Blend control. This has for a significant time been my favourite straight-up HM-2 Heavy Metal replica favourite - and is an even better proposition now.

Of course if you want more extended-range alternatives - I have listed out my preferred candidates at the different enclosure sizes - Mini, Compact, Medium and Large. Since the last time I did this exercise I&rsquo...

I don’t typically feature coverage of simply 2nd iteration limited edition artwork or colourway pedals - unless there is some sort of significant underlying change. While on this occasion I would kind of like to raise the issue of ’First Mover Disadvantage’!

By which I mean getting in on the first round release of a pedal - where soon after you acquire one - you kind of regret not holding out slightly longer - as an even better version materialises later on. This ...

There’s been a lot of chatter online about the relative merits of the established Thorpy OG Gunshot Overdrive and its new The Bunker sort of challenger. I’ve always likened the Gunshot to a Hot Rodded Plexi - while Adrian has revealed that its profile is actually closer to that of a JCM800 - but obviously there are significant overlaps. By contrast, The Bunker is at its core much closer to a JTM45 / Plexi range with its Texture knob rolled back, while dialling up the Texture gives ...

Several people predicted that following on from the pricey $400 hand-wired 1966 Range - which I wasn’t entirely complementary about - that Josh Scott would release more mainstream SMD style devices covering the same sort of territory. In the launch video (per Final Thoughts below) Josh mentioned that there would likely be 10 pedals in this new series - with the above 4 being the first available. I expect the Legends of Fuzz Series to overlap very significantly with the 1966 Range ...

This feature was inspired by two gentlemen - one Alexander ’Howard’ Dumble, and my friend Justin O who asked me what my take on the Cornerstone Gladio was. I was of course determined to do my typical comparative overview and name the usual suspects - while the first time I started down this route I ended up doing the Blues Breaker / King of Tone style feature instead. The previous article was based on a number of very similar pedals - circuit and control-topology-wise.

...

Readers of this blog will know that I’ve been waiting for my trio of Menatone vertical dual-footswitch pedals to arrive for quite some time now. For a considerable period these were presumed lost, as they dropped off the tracking radar for nearly six weeks. In any case - good things come to those who wait - and this has all been well worth waiting for.

It all started back on January 24th when I got in touch with Brian about his then very recent Vertical Fish Factory release. I ...

As far as I’m concerned this has been somewhat a long time coming and I’ve mentioned it a number of times previously. While the Whoctahell Sub-Octave Fuzz has had dual footswitches from the start - the Octahive Upper Octave Fuzz has always relied on a side toggle-switch until now.

I am generally a fan of Beetronics pedals and have 3 of theirs to-date - the Royal Jelly, Swarm, and the lower-right Octahive ArrowMint Edition pictured above. It always niggled me that the ...