GPX Blog

I’ve been following this pedal’s development since it first emerged - now pictured in its second iteration with more evenly spaced toggle-switches around its perimeter. In short each of those 12 x 3-way switches is neutral / off in its middle position - while left/right or up/down gives you different pathways through the circuit which often impacts multiple circuit elements and component values simultaneously. In some ways this is something of a chaos-engine with around 500K ...

Or more correctly speaking JAM Pedals’ Greek Design Agency Group ’Beetroot’ won the Gold Award in the ’17.8 Printed Miscellaneous’ category of this year’s European Design Awards. And well deserved in my opinion as JAM Pedals is one of the relatively few companies that focuses as much attention on its packaging as it does the enclosure artwork and of course its key circuit designs.

Modern day ’Unboxing’ has risen to a new level of artistry...

In a recent piece I slightly bemoaned the prevalence of second edition pedal iterations that held more appeal than the originals - and how that if you bought to soon you might end up with an aesthetically inferior model. So this article is the direct antidote to that where I highlight pedals than in my opinion look best in their original release artwork.

Pedal Design is very much an applied art - where name, function, format and colourway are all expertly selected and combined to ...

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 ...