An adventure that started back in September of 2019 and culminated at this year’s July Brighton show!

I was very lucky to snag one of the very last Austin Pride editions with the classic pairing of Germanium NTE103 and Silicon NTE123 Transistors. I acquired mine during the peak of Dan Querner’s ’Fabric Wrap Era’ with really colourful designs. Later models are much more single block colours than patterned fabric - although various tolex and textured finishes are now used - I really liked ...

A few notes in advance! Obviously I’m a huge fan of Analog Modulations in particular, and especially compact boxes - which deliver the largest numbers in my reference collection. While I do also like Portrait style 1590BB types too - and these are mostly they! The Hamstead Redwing is a little larger, and the Boss XS-100 is one of the largest pedals I have in my collection - and appears here somewhat shrunk down - otherwise this selection would look decidedly odd.

There were some very deep ...

I thought I should focus on my large format heavy-hitters for a change - where these 8 are some of my largest, most potent, and best favoured gain pedals. They are arranged here in alphabetical order, while they were released in the below chronological order. All 8 have featured heavily in my rig at different times - and all 8 are still very valid award winners and still in rotation. While the enormous girth of the Elektron Analog Drive means that is gets somewhat less of a rotation nowadays - ...

If you read my recent PastFX OG-1 piece - you would know that I initially intended to pick up an original long-dash OD-1 with the very original 14-pin JRC3403 OpAmp onboard. There’s hardly any of those available in the wild - and typically they are battered and way over-priced. I had intended to get one and have it modified with an additional tone-stack - as I always felt that was a key element missing from the original, and one of the reasons for the greater success of the Ibanez TS808 Tube ...

Verlie has outdone herself once more - with 3 more killer takes on notable vintage effects - utilising the same rarified components as those originals.

For her Klon take - she has removed a number of previously core circuit elements which can otherwise generate excess noise for some players. In removing those trouble-making parts - she has delivered an utterly unique take on the Klon - which she further enhances with 2-Band EQ, and an extra Presence switch. It has the usual Buffered Bypass ...

It took me a few years to pick up this full set of 4 - where each of these is a revelation - they all deliver more than you might initially think, and they do it in such a clever way. Each one of these is far greater than the sum of its parts - and all those parts are high quality THT components.

My only tiniest niggle here is that I feel the Grimalkin could do with a little more output volume, while all of these sound amazing, and are all super versatile.

We essentially have 2 fuzzes ...

So in my previous TODP features - on the Main ’Tube’ Modules, and Clipper Boards, I detailed all the different options available and how I ended up with the Germanium Dual Clipper and Green Fetzer circuit on that version. Those were my favourite pairing. With the Blue Pentode Mixer Module + Single Schottky Clipper my very close second favourites. Those 2 pairs of boards seem to be perfect for each other - and perfectly balanced in output profile.

The Germanium clipping weirdly only works ...

In the wake of the quite superb recent Olbia Super-Klone - which is my favourite Drunk Beaver Overdrive to-date as well as by far and away my favourite evolved Klon sound. I thought I should do a roundup / overview of my other favourite Drunk Beaver Overdrives too.

This listing and visual is roughly in order of my preferences - where fortunately - the first 5 pedals listed are mostly on general release. Vitalii has made 26 Overdrives so far by my count. Actually there’s a couple of earlier ...

I’ve been a huge fan of the Dumble sound for several years now, and have around 20 pedals representing that genre. All my Dumbles hit slightly differently and each has a distinct usage scenario - with some excelling at the cleaner lower-gain tones - like the Clean-Fusion II, and others delivering an incredibly mid-rangey sear - like the Zenkudo.

My very first ’Dumble’ was the Mad Professor Simble - back near the start of 2017 - that was recently reissued as a MKII with some further Lassi ...