Xploration • Curation • Recommendation
Highlights from the second Glasgow Stompbox Social at The Glad Cafe
I’m so glad to have made it to the sophomore Glasgow Stompbox Social. I was originally set to attend last year - while something came up last minute. I promised Angus I would attend this time around for sure - and I’m a man of my word!
I have to say that I didn’t particularly enjoy the train journey - both legs of the journey were delayed over and above already long running-times. We kind of arrived at Glasgow Central on time - but there was no platform available to us - which meant that said leg was nearly 5 hours long, and for Carriage E - the aircon wasn’t working for 2/3rds of the journey.
The way back was far worse - as owing to track-works - we got diverted onto the ’Birmingham Line’ for a period - but it was really badly coordinated - such that a massive freight train needed to cut across the flow of traffic. In that mess-up my train was overtaken by the later Euston train, and another local service that stopped at every station - so my second leg got delayed by around 3/4 of an hour - but regardless was less oppressive than Cariage E on the way up for the most part!
My hotel (Premier Inn) was right next to the station near enough, and kind of at the base of Buchanan Street - which I ended wandering up later that evening - and in fact I ended up at the Cineworld near the top of that hill - where I was just in time for the 9 o’clock 4DX showing of ’Nobody 2’ which I really rather enjoyed,
I Ubered down to The Glad Cafe just after breakfast and turned up around 10:15 - with only Angus arrived at that point. I had Angus to myself for the best part of an hour - after which Gwion and Emily arrived for Holy Island Audio, and Matt arrived shortly after that with his parents Jackie and Tony. In fact Doug from Chase Bliss also pitched up at a similar time - with Sine Effect’s Grant the only one really cutting it fine. All managed to set up in time!
I was able to snap quite a few pictures before the public turned up - the show started off a little slow - but picked up relatively quickly - and there were several busy periods - particularly in the middle section of the day - before the crowds started to thin out a touch. When I left around 4-ish to catch my train - there were plenty of people still in attendance and all the stands were still busy.
I always come to these events with a view to pick something up to make the journey fully worthwhile - and on this occasion - it was the Blind Panic Devices Reactor Fuzz that was the main candidate - as pictured above and below - and had been on the cards for a while. I was delighted to come away with one of those - and of course there will be an in-depth review coming up soon, I have done a couple of visuals already, with a couple more probably still to do. Expect a review within a week or so - said pedal’s gone straight onto the board of course - where it kicks out another great - Fjord Fuzz’s Midnattssol Fuzz-Vibe!
Blin Panic’s Matt and I were ’T-Shirt Twins’ on the day (not planned) - where both of us were wearing the somewhat rare tie-dyed Blind Panic Tee - where only a handful of those exist. There was just one of those left on the day - but it got snapped up soon enough too. Of course I didn’t waste the photo-op and so the main cover visual is of us two bearded T-Shirt Twins - with the Reactor Fuzz in the foreground!
The Back Room at The Glad Cade - 1006A Pollokshaws Road, G41 2HG
The Glad Cafe Venue is relatively easy to find along Pollokshaws Road - and was directly south from my hotel - mostly along the same road! The back room gave off very similar vibes to what I experienced at the first Wassup Nerds event - which was held in a back-room / performance area / stage at the Bristol Rough Trade store. Both those events delivered a fantastic warm and friendly atmosphere! Most of these evens are kind of like family or school reunions for me - where I've known most everyone of the exhibitors for a while.
New to me for this event was Grant from Sine Effect Electronics - who I had a very decent conversation with - and whom I look forward getting to know better over the coming weeks and months.
All the other exhibitors I've know for a while - and they're basically 'family'!
I took a series of 4 pictures of the back room - as in these examples below - with said room gradually picking up in terms of numbers of attendees - going from an empty pre-setup room to where everything was in full flow within an hour or so after kick-off!
The Glad Cafe sign was really cool - as pictured above. The Gad Cafe had an excellent bar, and an equally excellent kitchen - which was busy with breakfasts when I first arrived - and then got busier and busier - much like the back room next door!
The empty back room pre setup!
Angus and Gwion were first to set up as pictured, meanwhile Matt had some technical issues which were swiftly resolved by plugging in a lead! All 3 of those boards went up quite quickly - with Doug not far behind!
The left-side of the room in full flow!
The right-side of the room in full flow!
ABL Pedals & Showrunner - Angus
ABL's Angus doing his finest 'Begbie' impersonation (unplanned! and unrehearsed!)
It was as well I turned up early - and was able to spend some time with Angus in advance - as throughout the show he was almost persistently occupied with issuing raffle tickets - with a steady stream of takers!
I still intend to pick up his Szczur Rat Distortion and Toor OpAmp Muff - the latter of which I included in my Affordable British Pedals rundown in June. I would have thought that the Glashow show would have been perfect to pick up some Scottish pedals - but it was not to be on this occasion - there will be other opportunities.
Angus had the same two prototypes I saw him with in Leeds - albeit further forward still!, while the banner poster was from last year and included the 'Core' Distortion pedal that Angus designed for that year's Core Festival!
I''ve called Angus's 'ABL Pedals' - the 'JAM Pedals of Scotland' - as both lean into somewhat simpler analog designs, which are though juicy and fat and full of flavour!
Truth is that my pedal tally for August is already at 25 - where my threshold is normally 20. I was only really looking to pick up the Blind Panic Reactor Fuzz for sure - that one was kind of a given. Would have been nice to have picked up a few more - bu the Reactor mostly made it worthwhile. Where I could also have just stayed at home and traded that travel money for 4 or 5 pedals! Every purchasing decision is a pedal opportunity loss - and I quantify any sum of £60 and above in relation to pedal acquisitions. I am lucky and privileged to have access to to a number of different sources / resources - several of those provide pedals at no cost, and several are significantly discounted. All those decisions get weigh up over a typical month - and are allocated against a series of targets and priorities across various price points!
A big part of my mission is to feed the Guitar Pedal X Blog - which means I need a certain amount of pedals to cover each month. For August I already have more than enough for those purposes - and some are already being allocated to next month's intake - where there are already a further 4 en-route!
I think I would have been a little disappointed if I had come away with nothing from the show - but I think I came away with enough to mostly make it worthwhile, while not really entirely on the basis of the financials - these events are typically loss leaders for me as as such - they take a w lot of time and effort- and longer distances are obviously pricier and require overnight accommodation in addition. From a purely financial perspective most of these events will not yield net positive results. It's why I'm still not attending NAMM or The Guitar Summit - the sums involved just don't fully make fiscal sense. I could stay at home and spend all that travel money on more pedals for the blog ... We'll see how I feel when the next one rolls around.
I had hoped and expected to connect with a few more Scottish brands - so that's a little disappointing that only two were present. While of course I was very happy to meet all that were in attendance! Overall it was a very pleasant event in a super handy venue! In terms of time and funding - those events will need some degree of justification. They al need to be weighted up independently and dependent on the overall monthly intake of pedals too!
Blind Panic Devices - Matt, with parents Jackie and Tony in support
blindpanicdevices.bigcartel.com
Blind Panic's Matt is the King of Fabricators! If the 'A Team' was resurrected in this current timeline - Matt would inevitably be drafted in alongside a somewhat ageing Hannibal, Face, Mr. T and Mad Dog Murdock. Or he could be the latest incarnation of MacGyver!
He's particularly adept with a 3D-printer - as can be seen by his custom moulded microphones - as well as those 4 incredibly cool and unique custom knobs that populate the new Reactor Fuzz. I wasn't fully aware of alt the attention to detail - until I had spent some significant hands-on time with the device. Those knobs are very uniquely styled and with superb tactile feel to them too. We also have printed graphics on 3 of the sides of the pedal It's a fairly large device - but so distinct.
I have the perfect slot for it on the board - where it will stand in for the also excellent Fjord Fuzz Midnattssol Fuzz-Vibe. Both those pedals are exceptional in their looks as well as sound - while I give extra bonus points for unique proprietary designs of knobs.I will inevitably do an article on these pinnacles of design - where I will include custom-knobbed pedals from Blind Panic, Colortone, Cornerstone, and Rainger FX in that rundown - and possibly a coupe more that fit that profile! They all have to have custom proprietary knobs to be considered!
All Matt's pedals are very different and distinct - they don't necessarily all appeal to my own preferences and sensibilities - but there are several that do - including the Reactor, B2 Fuzzy Delay, and Slo-Fi Time-based Modulator / Filter - I have my eyes on each of those.
There were several compacts also that Matt had been prototyping - but he's a very dynamic builder and frequently changes trajectory for ever more unique and evolved effects.
Matt's Dad Tony has accompanied Matt to most of his events (even all possibly - I've seen him a lot!), while this is the first time I've met Mum Jackie too. Lovely folks all-round - I love seeing the whole family getting behind Matt and giving him their full support. I spent quite a bit of time with Tony in particular at the event.
I've loved what Matt does from the first encounter - and I'm delighted that I'm finally getting properly stuck in now. I will write the definitive piece on the Reactor - and then hopefully do the same kind of exercise again for the B2 and Slo-Fi. One thing at a time though!
As mentioned, I've already done a couple of new visuals for the Reactor - and the review will likely see one or two more in the final edition - I look forward to sharing all that with you within a week or so!
The first sort of flat-pack design visual for my forthcoming Reactor Fuzz review! With the 4 custom 3D Printed Knobs in each of the corners!
Holy Island Audio - Gwion and Emily
I was delighted to meet Gwion's partner Emily for the first time here - I love seeing friends, family and partners lend their full support to the art and craft of pedal building. It's taken me a wee while to get fully stuck into Holy Island and establish which of those pedals best appeal to my preferences and sensibilities - but I feel I've gotten there now!
I tend to favour compact pedals to a large degree (they're easier to ft into an already congested pedal-chain) - and I have picked out several suitable candidates for me from the range - including the new Blast Radius - which I covered on the site recently. I was incredibly impressed by Gwion's overview demo at the second Witney Pedal Party - and was determined then to get a few of those in for more in-depth and hands-on reviews - which hasn't quite happened yet.
Gwion had a brand new prototype on his board - the Summoner - which is an intriguing Tone Generator / Drone Machine - but currently still in WIP prototype state.
I had identified the Abracadaver, Angel Teeth, Spectral Fire, and the recent Blas Radius as suitable candidates for me. While hitherto Gwion and I haven't been able to fully coordinate on those interests. At the present time most of those are currently sold out / out of stock - with only the Blast Radius seemingly available on preorder. I'm already oversubscribed this month - with 25 pedals in for the month already - so I wasn't really chasing anything at the show - besides the Reactor Fuzz.
Gwion is obviously all about small-batch manufacture - and the production timings have not yet synced with my own schedule - I'm sure that time will come!
And I very much look forward to doing some deep dives on those compacts, and adding them to the reference collection. It's a little like my relationship with Tim Webster at Fredric Effects - where I must have seen him at a dozen different shows before we were properly able to sync up - which happened at this year's Woking Boutique Guitar Show - and so I'm well into that range now. I'm sure Gwion and I will have our moment too before too long - we'll see how much longer it takes for us to get fully in sync as such.
It's as much down to Gwion as much as me as to when and how this happens - I'm sure there is a happy accord somewhere on the horizon!
As a final note I have to compliment Gwion on his fine choice of picks / plectrums - I traded one of my signature Hawk ones for one of his - I know I have it somewhere - I just can't put my hands on it at this precise moment. But it was heartening to find out that quite a few of the guitarists and exhibitors at the show - favoured the Jazz III format like me. Angus tends to favour the red Petrucci Nylon style ones - while for Dunlop - I'm all about the 'Ultex' ones! I have a bucket full of regular size pedal box candy picks as such - so I always get a little excited when I can put my hands on a variety that is made for my own sensibilities!
Chase Bliss - Doug
This was one of the few times that Doug had a pedal ahead of me for one of these shows! The Lost + Found Multi-FX that is to say - where the general release doesn't ship until September - while Doug had his hands on one of the prototypes - which was on his board for the day - while he will need to send it back to Chase Bliss HQ in a week or two for further updates. I believe the Impulse Synth voicing is the one that isn't fully finalised yet - but it sounded pretty immense to me already.
Doug has put out a coupe of teaser demos for the Lost + Found already which I've commented on Instagram about - both were really cinematic and creative - with hints of Stanley Kubrick and sort of Bladerunner-ish too. So I asked Doug to recreate those sounds for me - and he did a blistering job of it - one of the voicings was focused on the Sympathic Resonator while the other was the Impulse Synth into the Slow-Verb - both sounded superb!
I keep saying I want someone to make a 'Sci-fi Hi-fi' pedal which features all those ambient cinematic sci-fi sounds. Lots of weird ambient industrial reverbs with various artefacts - and all those other highly emotive and evocative sci-fi soundtrack sounds. The Meris Mercury is sort of billed as a sci-fi reverb - but delivers a fairly small part of that. The Amplitube X-Space I found to be a fairly exceptional Sci-fi reverb, while not always intentionally so, and still not with full coverage.
I feel that this Lost + Found will be particularly strong on the ambient side of things - but we need more elements in the mix to fully deliver the 'Sci-fi Hi-fi'!
In any case - Doug was easily able to recapture those key demo moments - and I had a wonderful 10-15 minute of impromptu Lost + Found magic. Doug definitely seems to have a knack with those sorts of tones - I feel I will inevitably have to adjust my playing style a little to match that vibe.
In any case - I loved the Brothers AM - now we just need a full-on Fuzz version of the Brothers platform - which is where I always thought it was headed. I'm also very excited to get my hands on my own Lost + Found - even if I never get beyond those two tones that Doug demoed - I'd by happy playing around with those for the longest time. There's something slightly hypnotic about those sounds - they kind of induce a sort of cognitive trance-state. I really think I'm going to have a lot of fun with the Lost + Found - and I'm grateful that Chase Bliss recognised the talents of Doug Tolley - and made him their UK Ambassador! I was the first to coin that phrase - and now everyone rightly uses it!
So a killer year for Chase Bliss already - and I think I will probably try to get myself to the Amsterdam Bliss Fest next year - as I'm such a fan of Tyler and Liz too! And after all these year's I've still not met Joel Korte. Would be nice to get him over for a Witney Pedal party one of those times - he's done Australia and the Netherlands now - surely he can share a little love with the UK also - are we not worthy too?
Sine Effect Electronics - Grant
One of the great things about the Glasgow Stompbox Social was the ability to meet some local legends. I had hoped for a few more, but I was delighted to finally make the acquaintance of Sine Effect's Grant who's actually been a pedal builder for quite some time now.
I first covered him in my Pedal Brands of Etys rundown - where I singled out his Disphoria Distortion- which is still very much on my acquisition list - but Grant had not brought any of those with him to the show!
I'm very keen to get stuck into Sine Effect - where the ideal jumping off point for me is probably in covering off those 'Nano' pedals first - or what I determine to be 'Micro' pedals by my scale - 'nano' is more like that recent tiny Olinthus Cicada Tube Screamer style overdrive.
There's an American brand calle AWOL - which makes a range of micro pedals too - but those are all just single knob pedals. The magic of Grant's Nano's is that some of them contain as many as 4 controls. And I would really like for him to extend that line out to a fuzz too - something like an SMT SuperFuzz would be amazing in that format.
That Nano Series range consists of the nanoPara 1-Band Parametric EQ, nanoDryve Overdrive (unique circuit), nanoGain Clean Boost, and the Wee D..I. Active D.I. pedal with XLR out. I could do one of my really striking quadrant stye articles on those 4 - that would be a cool project for sure.
Grant's Sine Effect is mostly known for is Parametric EQ and Fitler pedals - which poses some challenges for me - as I'm already fairly wedded to my Empress ParaEQ 2 Deluxe - while Grant offered some very compelling arguments in favour of his MegaPara DX - 4 Band Parametric EQ - which is a chailenge for me to fit into my very congested pedal-chain. While I will make it happen if Grant manages to convince me!
I think for starters I can focus on the Nano Series, then the Disphoria - while Grant tries to win me over for his Mega Para DX - I use both footswitches / sides of the ParaEQ 2 fairly regularly. - while I maintain an always open mind - and I'm always open to strong persuasive arguments.
It's tricky to have a proper in-depth talk at those shows - so I will be following up with Gran along more direct lines of communication - we just need to arrange a time when we can both chat.
Of course all of this is entirely up to Grant - as it is for any of these brands - I'm more than happy and wiling to get behind your pedals - but you need to want it too. I'm connected with several hundred brands now - some more closely than others obviously - while it's down to those brands and builders if they want me get involved in some way. Considering everything I do, I find it slightly odd when brands reject me, when there are so many clamouring to work with me. I guess you can never win them all over!
In any case - I have high hopes for Grant and Sine Effect - and we shall surely soon see how well we can work together! Pending that first chat of course!
Best in Show 'Crufts' Edition - Roland the Chinese Crested dog - with musician owner Stephan! (#ΖΖΖΤΕΦΑΝΟΣ)
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So I bumped into this delightful duo at the show - my Cypriot namesake and performing musician Stephan - with his very good boy 'Roland' - the very striking Chinese Crested Dog, I've not encountered that breed before - but said Roland was immaculately well behaved throughout - surely a great candidate for a show-dog mascot if ever there was!
I'm not particularly a dog person, and my lifestyle isn't particular conducive to pets in general - but I've bumped into some very well behaved very good boys over the last few months - starting with Hello Sailor Joe's Labrador 'Gibson'. There was also an immaculately well-behaved dog in the seat in front of me on my return train journey to London. That dog was called 'Mochi' but I forget what breed it was - I was told! But I then promptly forgot!
In any case I thought that the above picture would be a suitably jolly way to end this post!
I really rather enjoyed my time at the show - hopefully you all did too!
I will surely return - but I'm not sure yet if I will make it an annual pilgrimage yet - we shall see!
