News

The venerable ProCo Rat was first introduced back in 1978, and became one of the key distortion / fuzzstortion sounds of the 80’s in particular. Numerous bands past and present have had this as one of their key tone ingredients, and earlier versions of the pedal are still very collectable.

The interesting tones that the Rat generated came about somewhat by happenstance in using a fairly inefficient OpAmp chip which had all manner of quirky functional qualities - not least its low...

I should probably have covered this off sooner but I’m so satisfied with my True North Tweed Drive that I’ve not felt it necessary to look at alternatives. That said, there have been a few fairly recent additions to this group - so I thought I might as well do an overview of what’s around - usual suspects, new and old.

I’ve been aware of Tweed style overdrives for a while, in fact I had the Bearfoot FX Sparkling Yellow OD3 for more than a year before trying it ...

This article was largely triggered by the recently released Slö Multi Texture Reverb which of course I love and which has gone straight onto my wishlist despite its mono output. I see it as a solid competitor to the rather pricier and more complex Chase Bliss Audio Dark World and a perfect tool for ambient textures. I personally would use it as a textural tool in my ’glitch pedal’ slot as my main time-based effects are stereo.

I’ve featured Walrus Audio a fair ...

The Shepard Tone Effect is a fairly unique studio effect / modulation created by the magical intersection of octaves and resonant filters - it takes its name from cognitive scientist Roger Shepard who specialised in optical illusions. Wikipedia describes it as a musical illusion where a sound is formed consisting of a superposition of sine waves separated by octaves. When played with the bass pitch of the tone moving upward or downward, it is referred to as the Shepard scale. This creates the ...

As a follower of Juan and Nick’s Pedals and Effects YouTube Channel - I’ve been aware of Meris from day one, and have showed interest in and featured all of its pedals on this site at various times. I was the one that stated that Meris effects were probably more like weekend sportscars rather than daily runarounds, and I’ve had a Meris or two on my wishlist for a while. I came very close to acquiring an Enzo at one stage, but in the end decided that it wasn’t quite right...

When I do my category roundups and reviews, my remits are always to be as broad as possible within the set criteria, and I typically include one or two older and discontinued models alongside the usual suspects and new releases. It is always with some degree of sadness that I witness pedal builders going out of business for one reason or another. This industry seems to have a fairly high burnout rate and with competition getting ever fiercer, it is unfortunately understandable that some ...

At heart I’m very obviously a Strat-type or double-cut guitar shape fan and have been so from day one - I feel these instruments are just better ergonomically balanced and aesthetic-wise much more favourable than their single-cut brethren. That said I tend to get hung up on headstock shape, tuner alignment and type, perpendicularity of string pull etc. - and have tended to therefore gravitate towards those designs from PRS, MusicMan and Schecter - typically 3+3 or 4+2 variations.

  ...

It turns out that I’m quite the fan of drive pedals which occupy the space where overdrive and fuzz overlap beautifully. I have gravitated towards such sounds almost subconsciously ever since I got back into guitar. And while there are various fuzz pedals - particularly of the Germanium variety that can be tuned down to those sorts of tones, I’m referring more here to pedals whose very core character straddles both overdrive and fuzz - sometimes on the more fuzzy-drive end as I call...

This was one of the 3 big hits of the recent Winter NAMM show alongside the Chase Bliss Audio / Benson Amps Automatone PreAmp MKII and Strymon Volante Magnetic Echo Machine - at least in my opinion. And it’s one of my few key remaining acquisitions for this year.

We were never quite sure when this would be released, but the demo versions at NAMM looked pretty polished so I presumed a fairly imminent release and May therefore absolutely seems about right. The earlier versions were...

Followers of this site will know by now that I’m a big fan of Jackson Audio, and I’ve already put in an order for their brand new Broken Arrow Programmable Soft-Clipping Overdrive + Boost. I was amongst the first wave to adopt both the Prism and Bloom when they arrived on the scene, and now the Broken Arrow continues that legacy of smart footswitch-controlled innovation.

The control-layer technology on the Broken Arrow is identical to the Bloom - whereby you can press and ...