Xploration • Curation • Recommendation
2 of my 3 Holy Island Audio Compact Trifecta targets have landed - the Spectral Fire Drive, and Micro Mountain Mover Super-Muff - just the Blast Radius Oscillating Fuzz remains!
I’ve known Holy Island Audio since the fabulous Stourbridge FX Expo back in 2022. And I’ve encountered Gwion a good 20 times throughout the intervening years - but somewhat embarrassingly still hadn’t landed some of those fantastic full-on sounding pedals.
It seemed that whenever I encountered Gwion at a show - he never had any stock of the very pedal I was after at the time. As for most small brands - Gwion operates on a Small Batch methodology - but more from an order-window perspective - which had caught me out until now. I missed out on a couple of Blast Radius batches - as I didn’t fully get that he opens up an Order Window for around a month - for a limited batch - I think around 30 pedals or so. And when those ’slots’ are all sold he proceeds with manufacture. It seems like there’s a limited amount of pedals allocated for each batch as far as I gather. And obviously I wasn’t fully synced with that process until now.
A lot of Gwion’s output is on the larger side of things - where readers will know that I mostly favour Compact editions, but don’t mind the occasional portrait 1590BB - and can go larger for certain Multi-FX types.
I had my sights initially set on the simpler of Holy Island’s pedals - including the Abracadaver and Angel Teeth, the latter of which I believe may be discontinued now. In any case my timing was lousy for a number of years - until I put in a real concerted effort this year to get up to speed with Holy Island Audio.
I’ve targeted 3 of the recent compacts - where I hope to land the last of the 3 - the Blast Radius within the next couple of months - Gwion still needs to decide when he’s going to schedule that next batch / window. In the meantime I’ve seen a couple of used Angel Teeth possibilities that I may pursue also!
My initial intended Holy Island Audio Trifecta is as follows :
- Spectral Fire Clangy Overdrive (BluesBreaker x Traynor Preamp) - £175
- Micro Mountain Mover Super-Muff (Super-Fuzz x Big Muff) - £135
- Blast Radius Expression-controlled Oscillating Fuzz - £135
I will be doing reviews on all 3 as they land - as the first two have already. This is just a brief overview - and the individual reviews will materialise in following weeks! With a wee gap to the hopefully not too distant Blast Radius!
Currently the only one of the 3 that is available on the Holy Island Audio Webstore is the Spectral Fire - you will need to wait for further batches of the Micro Mountain Mover and Blast Radius!
Further individual details below as usual :
Spectral Fire Clangy Overdrive (BluesBreaker x Traynor Preamp) - £175
Controls - Gain, Voice : Clear + Bright / Additional Gain Stage, Master, High, Mid, Low.
An interesting blend of BluesBreaker and solid state Traynor Preamp - which is clear and bright with the voicing toggle up - more Breaker therefore, and when you flip the voicing switch down you really hear that typically garage grunge Traynor sound. A really useful wide-ranging overdrive with an intriguing core character. Gwion describes it as a Clangy Overdrive - which seems very apt to me. I've only had a couple of sessions with it so far - and it's a real joy to deploy!
Micro Mountain Mover Super-Muff (Super-Fuzz x Big Muff) - £135
Controls - Tone/Filter, Gain, Mids : Mid-Shift / Stock, Master.
This one shrinks down the mighty and massive Mountain Mover Fuzz into a more manageable compact format. It's an absolutely thunderous combination of Big Muff and Super-Fuzz - with that harmonic upper octave in the output on top of one of the most aggressive Big Muff outputs. Sounds suitably immense!
Blast Radius Expression-controlled Oscillating Fuzz - £135
Controls - Starve, Gain Stage 1 switch, Master, Gain Stage 2 switch, Blast/Gain/Oscillate, Gain Stage 3 switch.
This is the one that was first on my radar of these 3 but I somehow managed to miss the first 2 batches, I certainly won't miss the 3rd! A really cool 3-Gain-Stage Oscillating Fuzz - where you can switch each of the stages in and out - for different levels of gain output. And an expression ports allows you to control the Oscillation on-the-fly!
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