I’m not sure how I feel about this one! Not long after I get my much sought-after 4-knob BJFE Honey Bee - admittedly handmade edition - OneControl has now taken that self same circuit and squeezed it into a Mini Enclosure - as you can see from the above visual. Albeit we get 2 slightly different versions of the Mini with a special Custom Mini Edition too.

Controls - Volume, Drive, Bass, Treble.

Mini Custom - additional Vintage / Modern slider switch (Higher Gain) on left-side

Controls ...

Each of the months this year has been pretty exciting in several ways while we’re still facing various unprecedented delays in getting our hands on new pedals. I’ve had numerous talks with industry insiders this month and it seems that the order cycle for certain components - particularly in any sort of quantity - is as much as 18 months now. Shipping costs are still near an all-time high, while some of the container shipping is starting to come down a fraction - but still nowhere near pre-...

So I acquired my Bearfoot FX Bone Bender back in 2020 (Reverb.com) - and really enjoyed it’s somewhat Face-Bender-ish output - capable of both Fuzz Face and a variety of Tone Bender shades - but not exactly MKI. When I saw and heard Joe Light’s demo (Joe’s Pedals) of the BJFE version - I just had to have that too!

The very original BJFE Bone Benders consisted of 3 x NTE103A NPN Germanium Transistors while for subsequent versions Björn (Juhl) found he achieved better results with a JFET @ Q1...

It seems a long time since I did my Howard Alexander Dumble in memoriam article back on January 26th. At the time I voiced that I would very likely add a few more - and for sure they would include the ODS34, Menatone Dumbstruck - and probably MXR Shin-Juku Drive. There are certainly some great examples of the genre and back in January I had actually just 5 - the Cornerstone Gladio SC, Custom Tones Ethos Clean Fusion-II, Demon Pedals Kondo-Shifuku, Mad Professor Simble, and Wampler Euphoria.

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I’ve long wanted a 4-Knob BJFE Honey Bee, and when I did the feature on Sweden’s These Go To 11 and owner/founder Sebastian Nylund - the opportunity arose to get Björn Juhl to make me one of these slightly rarer 4-knob varieties as Sebastian is best friends with Björn and was his very first dealer from what I understand.

I consider Björn to be one of the finest living circuit makers - who has a wonderful ear for tone and the skills to make everything he hears...

Readers of this site will know that I’m a huge fan of Björn Juhl’s pedals - which nowadays means Mad Professor, OneControl and of course his own iconic original BJFE brand as featured here. I believe this is the first time these pedals are made available directly in the UK - certainly in modern times and in this number.

Joe’s Pedals is now officially a BJFE stockist and carries 10 of Björn’s most celebrated pedals - which are all enduring classics. You need to move quickly here as they are ...

I knew the ’These Go To 11’ website long before I was introduced to owner / founder Sebastian Nylund. It was the core reference for me for brands like BJFe and DanDrive and several more rarer boutique brands - and I have always admired Sebastian’s smart curation and selection process - and often used that in my own pedal discovery process.

These Go To 11 is an incredibly eclectic, but selective mix too of both mainstream and boutique pedal brands. It’s not exclusively guitar pedals like Joe...

My readers will know that I’ve featured Joe’s Pedals a fair few number of times on this site - in reference to where I acquired several of my own pedals from. My first introduction to said boutique was in search of Marc Ahlfs’ Skreddy Pedals. In fact 5 of my 8 Skreddy’s have come from Joe’s and I would have gotten more had those been in stock when I needed them - such is always the luck of the draw with pedal acquisitions - in that you cannot always get everything you want from the one source. ...

As mentioned in my Danish/Denmark pedals feature I had initially intended to do the Best of Scandinavia, but Denmark has so many internationally known brands I had to separate them out. For the remaining Scandinavian countries Sweden is obviously the strongest here with 6 featured in the Top 9 listing, then 2 Finnish and only 1 Norwegian brand of significant note.

Probably the most significant persona in Scandinavian pedal design / building is Swede Björn Juhl - who has pretty much ...