It was only natural that the Compact Format Preferred Versions feature should follow the Mini examples. Again largely inspired by the recent ’12 Degrees’ projects.

Once more I’ve had a change of mind on some of the candidates and the preferred examples are slightly different to those previous references. Obviously new pedals have arisen, and priorities and preferences can shift fairly regularly based on prevailing mood.

That said, most of these are long-term...

So Reverb.com has just announced which limited edition pedal collaborations go on sale today - Tuesday 23rd February - to further celebrate the imminent release of ’The Pedal Movie’. The first two pedals went on sale last November and sold out pretty instantaneously. 1000 of Chase Bliss Audio + Zvex collaboration Bliss Factory Fuzz, and 1000 of Death By Audio + EarthQuaker Devices collaboration Time Shadows Subharmonic Multi-Delay Resonator.

Both pedals were rather original...

And so it begins again! This time punctuated by Virtual NAMM / Believe in Music Week and some certain JA incident.

I will include a mini NAMM roundup here of what some of my favourites were. In the past I’ve done a separate highlights article on the subject - but there really weren’t that many releases this time around to warrant such - in fact I would estimate only around 10% of the volume released in 2020 and 2019.

I will also indicate where I think I’m ...

I’m actually quite a fan of Greenhouse Effects, even though I don’t have many to my name yet. In fact my sole representative to date is the doomy Sludge Hammer Fuzz which I really enjoy.

On this occasion Greenhouse Effects have delivered a really cool take on a sort of Muff-style fuzz - as indicated by the control topology of Volume, Tone (Dark>Bright), and Sustain. So far all very ordinary - while if you hold down the footswitch for 200ms or longer you get to switch ...

It is with a heavy heart I report that this will be the last Jackson Audio feature I include on this site. I had intended doing a full in-depth review of the unit and all 6 Plugin Modules. And in pursuit of such I tried to request some degree of accommodation / discount to help make this happen. After all $480 / £480 all in is a very significant outlay, and Guitar Pedal X is entirely self-funded. It’s quite normal in this industry to engage in a fair and equitable value exchange - ...

I’ve just recently taken delivery of my own Salvage Fuzz - Organic variety (as pictured above right). Much like with the Reeves Electro BlackHatSound it took me a while to decide on the colour scheme - and I was eventually split between the Shade and Organic variants before coming down in favour of the latter.

Mike describes this as very much his Pandemic Fuzz - where limited parts supply because of Covid restrictions - led him to make best use of what he already had in his parts...

This article was prompted by an observation of obviously complementary fuzz pairings - where I currently own all of these bar the two Dwarfcraft Devices - Limited Edition Necromancer and Reese Lightning. In fact a number of these could be construed to be officially highly limited - where Buffalo FX and Dwarfcraft Devices have both ceased trading and their products are in very short supply. There were only 25 dual-footswitch editions of the Dwarfcraft Devices Limited Edition Dark Arts ...

This is obviously a follow-up from the Josh Scott / JHS January 1st YouTube video as below. Where Josh carried out and exercise where he compiled the best pedals released over the last two decades - in 6 specific categories - Best Overdrive / Distortion, Best Fuzz, Best Time-Based Effect, Best Modulation, Best Compressor, and Best Weird / Other - all must have been release January 1st 2000 or later.

Along with his own take, he solicited opinions from Jamie Stillman of EQD, Matthew ...

This is one of those articles that’s been a long-time coming, and where I needed to spend a rather large chunk of time getting fully under the skin of the pedal in question - the really quite superb, but also somewhat slightly flawed Boss GT-1000 CORE Guitar Effects Processor.

I must start by stating that I came into this project with somewhat lofty expectations, and there was some degree of naivety to my beliefs as to what was contained within this pedal, and more importantly ...

I do love pedals with 3-Band EQ’s - and fuzz pedals with such a topology are still relatively rare to make this new pair some keen objects of interest.

Besides having similar EQ controls these pedals are really quite different in the tones they render and at which price point. Both offer sufficient appeal for me to want to add them to the collection, while the new EHX Nano Metal Muff really ramps up its attractiveness with with a very attractive price-tag - where the 3 Leaf Doom ...