It’s been quite the epic journey for me to get to Lichtlaerm Audio - which goes all the way back to February of 2020 - where I believe I was the first Pedal Blog to feature Daniel Ringl’s original first incarnation line of pedals - which had white graphics onto black facias , on top of wine-red gloss-finished enclosures (Update! - looked like white print in photos, but Daniel says - "the old line-up was silver prints directly on smooth black enclosures - the photos looked a bit white but it was...

This is such a smart idea - using Bit-Crushing, Sample Rate Reduction, Aliasing and Warble together to generate the most awesome of somewhat jagged and brittle artifacts-loaded digitally mangled fuzz textures. You really get some very interesting timbres here - not all necessarily entirely musical - but each a glorious dissonance in its own way.

I’ve always called myself principally a ’Noise Maker’ and this type of effect is exactly the kind of thing I’m constantly on the look out for. ...

Lastgasp’s Octavella Upper Octave Fuzz is well known for its fantastic and complex full fat searing texture. It has so much sear on tap in fact - that you need to be very careful in particularly how you deploy the Gain and Feedback Knobs - if you ride those too high you get a very obvious feedback ’whistle’ which for me I was able to dial out for my perfect settings.

You’re basically tuning the Gain and Feedback knobs in tandem - making micro-adjustments to ensure that you don’t get any ...

Supposedly the world’s best loved Autowah / Envelope Filter - has been improved further - for better headroom to match up with any scenario, a new Side Chain Input, and some refinements to the super clean boost.

The charm of the DiscumBOBulator has always been its simplicity in use - just 4 knobs to thing about - and the Boost one is optional. You simply decide if the Filter Slope is Up or Down, and then you tune in the Funk!

I have a plethora of Envelope Filter pedals that serve as ...

Readers will be aware that I recently added 2 further Dumble style Overdrives to the reference collection. First the Menatone Dumbstruck V2, and then most recently the superb Tanabe Zenkudo.

I’ve decided that I’m at a point now where this selection is fully representative of this genre, of course I do have a few more targets in this category, while I feel I now have most of the major top-tier contenders. Notably missing here is Robben Ford’s evidently much loved Lovepedal / Hermida Zen ...

Based on the 60’s Kent Tremolo Pedal - essentially a re-badge of the Schaller Tremolo, the Tru-Fi Ultra Tremolo has a fairly unique sound signature. I heard something I really liked in the YouTube demo and sound samples, while I’m always suspicious of Modulation pedals that come without a Level control.

The nature of LFO Modulations is that you get a noticeable drop in volume as the signal climbs and dips in alternating fashion. To counteract volume drop, lots of tremolos employ a preamp ...

The original BigSky was a total game-changer in 2013 and ushered in the era of pristine pro studio level reverb workstation pedals. When I got stuck into pedals properly around 10 years ago, the Strymon Stryfecta of BigSky, Mobius and Timeline was one of the first major investments I made!

Since then I’ve had a number of different Reverb Workstations (around a dozen) on that particular #41 slot (I love and retain all of those) - which slot is currently fabulously occupied by the Poly Verbs ...

Another totally mad month for sure - loaded with frenetic activity and peppered with highs as well as crushing disappointments. The first give-away for GPX didn’t quite hit the highs I expected (said give-away closes tonight at 23:59 BST). And there are some weird gaps in the entrants’ home countries - certainly no shortage from the USA, UK, Canada, Australia, or much of mainland Europe. I’m active in a lot more countries than have so far entered the give-away, so I don’t fully understand why ...

I’ve gone a little bit movie poster on this one! The saga of the forgotten Top Gun :

’The Bluesman!’

I’ve long been a fan of Chris Buck - and indeed named him as one of my favourite 25 Guitar Heroes back in a 2022 article. His incredibly expressive touch is second to none! And he can wring out the most impressive detail and nuance over several bars - from just a single note!

So it’s entirely fitting that Thorpy has built him an equally dynamic and expressive pedal to match Chris’s ...