t68guitarpedals.bigcartel.com

This is my first encounter of George and his T68 brand - named after one of Manchester's key historic tramlines.

I picked out his Morricone V3 Spaghetti Western Fuzz - here in pink blush edition, that goes for £85, and  his No Tape Dual Channel Four-Track Fuzz Preamp, which is £150.

There's also a Reverse Sawtooth 'How Does It Feel?" Tremolo inspired by Spacemen 3 - which is also a very reasonable £95.

A cool fledgling brand which promises much, Will be interesting to watch this one develop!

www.leylandpedals.co.uk

Caleb was one of the celebrated 2022 Stourbridge Pedal Expo participants - alongside quite a few at this show.

That's the first and last show I encountered him at until now. I had bought his full Boss DF-2 SUPER Feedback & Distortion Mod, as well as his Hum Along Pedal - inspired by his own DF-2 Mod.

He's been busy in the intervening 4 years - and has significantly refined his production quality - those etched designs look a lot sharper and more consistent now. and he had 2 new pedals with him - The Peace Lilly (based on the cult Ibanez PL5 Powerlead), alongside a brand new 'Pebble' evolved EHX Small Stone Phase-Shifter take.

Both looked great - I will definitely be coming for the Peace Lilly which goes for £150, prices are mostly in the £150-£170 range.

Good to see Caleb back on the circuit again - he's come a long way since Stourbridge!

ritualdevices.co.uk

I have caught up with my good friend Wub on 3 recent consecutive occasions - last year's Kempton Park show, then the Birmingham Guitar Show, and how here at Noise Maker - so we've kind of covered most of the ground before.

There's several new pedals coming, but nothing new released yet this year.

Wub told me that I had inspired him to lean more in the the modulation side of things - where I've been a huge advocate of his Fay and Rainmaker devices - which ever offer something a little different and a little more.

The 4 flagship pedals have the most intricate geometric etched designs to them. All 4 of those are incredibly worthy, where overall pedal pricing ranges from £120 to £249.

I very much look forward to seeing Wub's new creations a little later in the year!

mrmojofx.com

Mr. Mojo FX's Dani first reached out to me at the tail end of October last year. I had already come across their really creative full-colour 3D-printed footswitch toppers before. It just needed the personal introductions to get fully engaged.

I love the Vintage Tech series in particular - which you can see across a number of my pedals - including my Fuzzbillion and Thorpy Fat General Compressor. Those toppers don't ft a few of my soft-touch footswitches - whose circumferences are just a fraction too much to be accommodated.

Mr. Mojo has 3 Topper Series currently - Vintage Tech, Masks and Munchies - with more arriving soon.

They've all so recently launched a new line of Knob Caps - which presumable fit those same stems. Actually we really need knob toppers too - for those Mini Pots - you know - the tiny black ones which a number of pedals use - that's surely a huge opening too!

These are good clean smart fun, and help pep up your pedalboard. Some are more ergonomically pleasing and more 'comfortable' than others - but all of these are worthy - and look brilliant in person. The detail on these is just fantastic.

I adviced that the Ice Cream Knob Cap needs a line of red syrup going down from the very top of that swill - otherwise it's not a fully visible marker!

I believe I'm in line for some Knob Caps soon enough - you will know when that article appears!

Mr. Mojo FX were on a whistle-stop tour of the the UK to try to connected with a variety of independent dealers - I of course wish them the very best of luck.

Dani prefers to remain in the background - where Patricia is the friendly face of the company. I really like these - the People and the Toppers!

Prices range from £4 per Knob Topper to £6 for the Footswitch Toppers.

hamiltoneffects.com

This is the third time I have encountered James. I first met him at last years' Brighton Guitar Show & Pedal Expo - and he's show significant progress year time - with the core pedals further iterated each time.

He has now deliberately separated the range into Core (mainline) and Faded (affordable) pedals - where the latter now utilises Dymo style embossed labels, and the Core series now has a more abstract graphic facia.

I belive James is still prototyping and experimenting to a degree as the branding isn't always as visible at it needs to be. These are both smart departures, and well considered.

The 2 pedals featured are the Core Embers Low Gain Fuzz Preamp (£249), and the Faded Twin 2-Stage Saturator / Drive (£149).

Back at last year's Brigthon I said James was one to watch, and he's still making steady progress. Right at this minute he's in refinement mode!

isntses.weebly.com/gear.html

I spent some considerable time talking to performance artists and circuit designers Lisa and Tim. I was so impressed with these Arduino Microprocessor Controller circuits / effectors - with each one mostly based on a notable man-made disaster. Where the circuitboard follows the topology and contours of the landscape, structures and buildings involved in those disasters. And Tim and Lisa jointly come up with an effected sonic signature to represent the narrative of that disaster / event.

I kind of fell in love with these - even though they're far from my usual stompboxes. They each run off a 9V supply, battery clip too presumably - with no bypass switch, but numerous controls to manipulate the output profile.

The Chernobyl one appeals to me the most for several reasons - the shape, the memory of that event, all the resultant computer games and lore - and Lisa's beautiful designs - which mix up Black, White, Silver and Gold with all the usual circuit components which represent the lay of the land and structures.

There are currently 4 in this series - the Chernobylizer, Dark Harvestator, Fort Processor, and Mars Rover/izer - you can buy fully assembled for around £135, with DIY kits under £100 (£77 / £99). And you can pay an additional £10 for a protective perspex base.

I feel these need some sort of perspex / Lexan covers too ideally - while they're pretty perfect as is. The Chernobylizer has a number of gold touch-pads for further triggering and impacting those atmospheric generated sounds.

I suggested a haunted faded seaside illumination theme to Lisa - which combined discordant fairground and music-box sounds with the gentle white-noise reverb of swishing shore! And with loads of LED's to represent the shoreline illumination!

I'm definitely going to collect these - starting with the Chernobylizer - and will reach out to Lisa and Tim - as soon as this article goes live!

The Chernobylizer and Fort Processor are featured in the above visual!

holyislandaudio.bigcartel.com

I have met both Gwion and Emily at a number of shows now - while I don't think it was until last year's Glasgow Stompbox Social that I got formally introduced to Emily.

I've said before that I'm a little behind on my Holy Island Capsule collection - my timing always seems to be a little off in terms of syncing with key releases and pedal availability. 

I've long intended to get an Angel Teeth and Abracadaver, and more recently the Blast Radius (those 3 are £100-£135) I would quite happily own all of Gwion's compact noise-makers. While he tends to specialise more in the larger formats of pedals.

I've pictured a recent custom edition of the Spectral Palace which Gwion had with him on this occasion (£235) - and I've pictured the Blast Radius also to remind me that it remains a priority for me.

I've been seeing Gwion at these shows for several years now - it's way beyond time that I own a few of his - but they're not always in production when I'm flush. And the end of the month is often fiscally problematic for me.

These are all very unique noise-maker boxes - if you're into the raw and untempered nature of effects - then this is the brand for you. You need quite a bit of pedalboard real-estate to accommodate some of these!

www.moosetwentythree.com

I was peripherally aware of Cian's Moose Electronics for a while - with Cian probably the best known of the Irish builders. And with a long legacy to his craft.

It looks like the range has had a recent update - with mostly black and gold colourway editions now throughout.

A number of these remain as targets for me - including the Brass Neck Dirty Boost / Overdrive pictured. I properly connected with this brand when my good friend Joe Light took these into stock at Joe's Pedals last year.

I acquired my first 'Moose' last year - the excellent Black Russian and Ram's Head inspired Electric Elk Fuzz - which uses high gain BC549C to achieve its vibrant output.

The Brass Neck and Electric Elk pictured are both at €199.

www.fredric.co.uk/pedals

I picked up Tim's 2 latest pedals at the recent Birmingham Guitar Show - the Petite Super Unpleasant Companion, and the V2 Verzerrer Distortion - with extra controls. Both of those are still awaiting demos, but 'The Petite' is already on the board - a super Dual-Voice Companion and Super-Fuzz - perfectly laid out and calibrated - that one sounds superb! (£185).

Some customers asked Tim to separate out just the Super-Fuzz voicing from that pedal - and so he made just a handful or so to take to shows - just 6 so far I think. Obviously it's a little less than the petite - while the Petite is entirely perfect as is - you should automatically buy that one - it has the same Super-Fuzz circuit onboard - but with its sibling Companion Fuzz too.

I think the FY-6 stand-alone Super-Fuzz is around £140 or so. You may as well rather get the Petite - for just £35 or so more. Of course some degree of discount is often available at shows, and depending on how much Tim likes you as a person!

www.intensivecareaudio.com

Patrick's killer high-octane Death Muff Fuzz is still on the board - where I acquired that one somewhat late in the day last year. It's one of the most violent Muff-style pedals out there - with a superb gainified rawness at peak levels.

The Death Muff is just £149 - and was made to be cranked. It is accompanied in the above visual by my other favourite ICA pedal - the Vena Cava Filter - which is a kind of Modulated Distoriton in terms of how I deploy it. It is a Multi-FX of sorts with an array of different outpouts - I like it with the Gain cranked and maximum waveform destruction applied.  The Vena Cava is £220.

There's still a couple of ICA pedals I don't yet have - the Fideleater and Recovery Phase (also £220) I should probably circle around back to those before the next new Intensive Care Audio Pedal comes along!

Good to see Patrick as always - he was my travel companion for last year's Witney Pedal Party 4, while we got inadvertently separated on the return journey!

www.lifeisunfair.co.uk

Grindle has been so busy with other people's projects that he made hardly any appearances at pedal shows last year, and didn't have any significant release to follow up this superb Boston Manor Collaboration Bad Machine Multi-Gain Weapon - a mix of FZ-2, HM-2 and MT-2! An all-round incredibly multi-gain pedal. (£230) as pictured in my cool pastel blue and pink edition.

Also pictured is Teaching Machine's Fuzzbillion - my Pedal of the Year last year - and where Grindle designed / engineered the core PCB.

Grindle remain in high demand as there are few with that refined touch - we're talking black-belt circuit wrangling here. The Fuzzbillion is a next level genius pedal - and I'm fortunate to have had mine since early October last year.

These are just in stock now at Andertons - where they go for £435.

Grindle also had a couple of 4-channel CV-based MIDI controllers which were perfect control devices for the modular synth crowd, not as useful for stompbox types - but still really cool devices with a myriad uses!

Grindle is the master of fuzz for sure - and I look forward to seeing more creations in the future along those lines.

I'm aware that there's plenty of stuff coming down the line, including another collaboration with neighbours - Teaching Machines!

zandercircuitry.com

It's great to see Alex and Maisy back on the circuit again - I think it's two years since I saw Alex last - at the Brighton Show. Alex and I became good friends in the run-up to the legendary Stourbridge Pedal Expo - which set the pattern for so many of these smaller independent shows.

Alex's high-powered Art Director job and numerous DIY Carpentry projects have kept him at capacity for those intervening years. While he's now back on the pedal trail - with a significant brand relaunch arriving in the next month or two - with a significant shift in branding and pedal aesthetics - supposedly towards a more minimal aesthetic.

Alex had several of his listed custom colour enclosures with him - and customers at the show were given the opportunity to freely select their own colour combination of enclosures and knobs!

I already have all of Alex's compacts - but he promises that there are more varieties on the way alongside the forthcoming brand revamp.

Alex has already gone through a major branding shift since my association with him, and I very much look forward to glimpsing the new direction for the very first time. More details to come!

bleakdistrict.co.uk/?store-page-zrf90Z=2

Phil is another whose busy life got in the way of a couple of show attendances at the tail end of last year. I was just to collaborate on the Orbits launch - but a wide variety of factors prevailed - where that project is only now coming back into focus for me.

The Orbits (£245) is a totally killer TRS Full Stereo Granular Synthesis Engine which is the perfect swap-in for my Butterfly Effect Dobbo - near the end of the chain. That project has been on the cards for a while, but took a brief hiatus in the latter months lf last year. I look forward to reporting on the Orbits very soon!

Phil has somewhat pruned the range too - so I've featured his first killer breakthrough pedal - The Tapescape Modulated Delay (£225). That and the Orbits are kind of Bleak District's Flagship pedals now - with the Tapescape representing what was, and the Orbits - what will be!

I still need to grab a Terra Earthly Overdrive from Phil - that's long been a target (£145) as has the discontinued Slate Discrete Germanium Preamplifier. I hoping to persuade Phil to dig deep and make me one of those - if I can source the rare components he ran out of!

I'm delighted to have Phil back on the circuit again - he's one of the Stourbridge originals too!

www.blanchflowerguitars.com

I've bumped into Marcus at quite a few events now, but this is the first time I'm making proper contact. And it's just as well as Marcus is also the show runner for the forthcoming Norwich Fret Fest (June 20th). Which several of my friends are participating in - another must-attend event for sure!

Marcus is also neighbour to my good friend Matt Knight - of Boss (Global Sales and Marketing Manager), and Guitar Nerds fPoscast ame. Matt and Joe (Branton) have long waxed lyrical about how good Marcus's Blanchflower guitars are - while Joe was considerably quicker to pull the trigger!

Pictured is Matt Knight's new Bolt Thinline Guitar - in beautiful Purple and Pink sparkle colourway - with those pink foil pickups too - an absolutely gorgeous guitar - and I really love everything about that guitar - including the headstock shape.

Marcus established himself initially as a builder of fine and often sort of vertical display / performance pedalboards. So this pivot to luthier supreme is quite the move. I'm very fussy with guitar body and headstock shapes - ergonomics and key scientific method markers are key criteria for me - and it seems like Marcus hits everyone of those markers.

A guitar similar to Matt's is in the region of £1,800+ - which is exceptional value. I would quite like a whammy bar / bridge on my guitar - so will need to wait for Marcus to cross that bridge as such! I will definitely be coming for one of these eventually.

Marcus has definitely hit the ground running here. 'Blanchflower' is apparently his mother's maiden name - I think's it rather cool - even though it seems to be somewhat tricky for certain German YouTube personalities to pronounce!

www.thawney.com

I was delighted to make contact with Thawney at last - as I'd come across the 'It's Still Raining' pedal before, then forgot where I saw it, only to be reminded again by TheGigRig's Gigs and Rigs Show a fortnight ago - where said pedal was covered in that shows New Pedals Segment - as follows :

The 'It's Still Raining' is an alias-y stuttery reverb effect - which delivers a pitter-patter of sort of digital rain! The pedal is very well named, and is right up my street in terms of its affected textures, while I would of course prefer it in stereo format - for a fully immersive experience. But I can still appreciate its efficacy in this format, and I still want one! It goes for £250!

I had intended to do a quick feature around the time TheGigRig episode emerged. - but I was unable to find a suitable image for my typical visual / editorial style. So I was determined to ask Thawney at the show - for a suitable picture - so that I could cover this pedal.

Also present at the show was a prototype of an Enveloper-follower Bias Tremolo - which adjusts Depth and Rate in rerponse to your pick attack. I have a few of those, and I've always found an envelope follower to be useful with tremolos - where I mostly use it to speed up or slow down the tremolo flutter - dynamically and on-the-fly.

Finally, Thawney had this square LED Grid Performance Device - which needed to be programmed or have specific programs selected to generate a combination of moving LED visuals / patterns, alongside associative sonic outputs. The device contains a gyroscope so you can manipulate it in several ways / dimensions and cause the LED pixels to swarm and sway in a variety of interesting ways. An intriguing performance device for sure - which many seemed to enjoy manipulating. I've yet to figure out a specific usage occasion for myself, but I guess I'm not the target audience for said device - albeit it is also an interesting sound generator and controller - depending on how you deploy it. It for sure has a myriad potential uses - like a spatially manipulative mini sort of Yamaha Tenori-on!

I forgot to ask the pricing for the latter two devices, and I can't find any further details online - seemingly those are both still in their prototype phase!

www.greateasternfx.com

It's always good fun catching up with my friend David, who was missed at the recent London Synth & Pedal Expo - I guess he decided to do this one instead.

His most popular pedal on the day was the XO Variable Crossover Blender - which is about as potent as a Mono Parallel Blender can get - it has so may smart features onboard, and is really smarty engineered with cool extras. That one goes for £229.

Incredibly there are still some Focus Fuzz Deluxe's remaining - on of my favourite fuzzes of last year (£299), and there's still  a handful of the recent Obsolete Devices Distoriton Filter D312A remaining (£249). Surely those won't remain unclaimed for long - all 3 of these referenced pedals are killer.

While if you can only buy one - then get the Focus Fuzz Deluxe - a Boost, Overdrive, and Fuzz unit with optional Harmonic Overtone Octave! As I mentioned for the original Germanium Focus Fuzz - it essentially works as 3 gain stages - where you can solo any one of those gain stages - or combine them together for increasingly potent output.

I eagerly await David's next smart creation - the 123 Boost - where you can set 3 different independent Boost levels, and then ramp up and down through them in a variety of ways - all on a mini 1590A format with smart light-up action. That one should not be too far away!

www.chasebliss.eu

Often the busiest stand around. Chase Bliss was nigh on swamped at the recent London Synth and Pedal Expo - and I found it impossible to pin Doug down for a picture - until very late in the day.

Obviously the two latest releases for Chase Bliss were the Monochromatic Black Brothers AM edition and White Lossy Edition. I think if you have the original versions of those then the new colourway editions are less exciting.

Back at the London show Chase Bliss's Liz attempted to sell me on the promise of the cool Chompi Sample Manipulator Synth - for which Chase Bliss have just brought out a new alternative operating system - which does vastly different things to the original. There was never enough time at the earlier event - and Doug was way too busy with the regular punters to spend time showing me the finer points of that device.

Doug always travels to these shows without any pedals to sell - which is understandable from the logistics side - and how everything European currently goes through Liz and Tyler in Amsterdam. I still think he should have a few EXP Expression Rollers with him - as I'm sure a few of those would sell at the show. I would certainly buy one were it available first hand! That pedal is €239 (£208) via Amsterdam - compared to the usual price tag for Chase Bliss pedals - of €469 (£408).

In any case - always wonderful to catch up with Doug - however little time you get before you are interrupted!

www.brute-creations.com

This was my first time meeting Martin and Simon from Brute Creations. I did not now quite what to expect - as I didn't particularly get along with their website.

There's a Steve Albini connection to a couple of their pedals - the Harmonic Percolator and the 'Who Fears The King' Instrument Voice Preamp (based on the Intersound preamp). I have an Electronic Audio Experiments 'Dude Incedible' take - which combines both IVP and Harmonic Percolator in the same unit. EAE also has The Surveyor as a separate take of the IVP. While Brute Creations pricing is considerably more affordable. I believe the two pedals featured in my visual were priced around £125 / £135 at the show. So the one on the right is the IVP type.

The one on the left is a full throttle take on the Elk Sustainar Muff / EQD Hizumitas - but with no clipping applied for a raw and brutal high octane output. Like the Elk Sustainar on Steroids!

The Brutalist would be my pick of the bunch - if that is too much for you - there is also a more stock take on the Sustainar / Hizumitas which is called 'Amplifier Workshop'.

These are quite minimalist / raw pedals, while there output is particularly potent - as I witnessed during their downstairs showcase - while I was on a lunch break!

Aesthetically these pedals could be improved, but you can't quibble over the potency of their output - they sounded wonderfully full-on for the showcase!

lottiecanto.com

I first met Lottie at the first Wassup Nerds event in Bristol - which was at the back of the Bristol Rough Trade store - a venue I rather enjoyed - as you can combine your regular pedal browsing with an energetic bout of crate digging.

I have a couple of kalimbas which I use mostly with my Boss RC-600 Loop Station - but from the first moment I saw Lottie's Colour Palette, amore evolved and electrified Kalimba with 3 controls - Mode x 8, Adjust, Mix. My other two Kalimbas just have a single output jack - while the Colour Palette allows you to further effect the waning of those kalimba tines!.

I've long wanted one - while the pricing and timing of these has thus far got in the way of acquisition. £275 is not an unreasonable price for what you get, while it all depends on how much use you're going to get out of it - as tho how much real value it holds.

From Lottie's perspective his small-ish batches sell out almost immediately - there's always more demand than supply and therefore never a reason to discount - even for the like of me! I should have probably snagged one two years ago in Bristol - Lottie had a selection with him then. He also had his original Birmingham Bull Fuzz - having grown up in Sutton Coldifeld I think it was. I thought it particular apt to have a Brimmingham Bull Fuzz at a Birmingham show. Lottie has since decamped to Bristol. With him on the day was his friend Connor - who helped him out with some of his earliest demos.

As I mentioned elsewhere in this article - end-of-month shows are never particularly handy for me - as the pedal budget and contingency have long since been allocated - and especially this year where this is the third show I attend in a month. I've already picked up a large number of pedals for the month and so am even less inclined to want to spend more.

I still want a Colour Palette and a Bull Fuzz - and I'm resigned to the fact that there will beer be any chance of opportunistic discounts or accommodations for those - it's really just about the timing now.

Lottie also had a FV1 Spin Chip Micro Reverb - which device is one of the few bespoke made for effects pedals - where it came with a built-in spring reverb effect. On Lottie's version you just have a single Devay Size knob, and you can further adjust Mix via an internal trimmer - that reverb was priced at £175 - again not unreasonable, while not really priced for a quick sale. Around £100 to £125 in terms of Conjoint Pricing Strategy  would be around the optimal charge for a simple quick-selling pedal.

Had this show been nearer to the start of the month - I would have been far more likely to have come away with a few! I picked up a number at the earlier Birmingham Guitar Show, and the London Synth and Pedal Expo on the week before Noise Maker Market. I saw a lot of the same people twice!