The latest Pettyjohn Electronics Pedal is the Core Edge Low Gain Overdrive (Gørva-enclosured). This pedal owes its pedigree to Pettyjohn’s best-selling Chime Overdrive - which per the visual can really be considered the sort of Senior version of that circuit.

Obviously we have slightly different controls, and at default the Chime is loaded with Yellow LEDs - which are designed for relatively quick-onset breakup. While the default Edge comes with Blue LEDs designed for ...

March seems to have been unusually busy on all sides really, particularly with the day-job’s annual keynote event. Generally this year has been off to quite a moderate start, but that seems to have accelerated somewhat during this month.

It’s been a mixture of January NAMM pedals materialising and spring-time special offers, all of which contributed to a somewhat bumper month - with a record-breaking for me 29 acquisitions, prior to that the record stood at 26, while that ...

I acquired my original Blue OC45 Constellation pretty much as soon as it was announced - or back in April of 2018, and it was a mainstay of my pedal-chain for several months in a row then, and still puts in a fairly regular appearance / rotation nowadays. It was probably due another rotation right about now - so it’s handy to reminisce on its prowess versus the new limited edition CV7003 variety - which uses that slightly rarer transistor type, and where only 200 will be made.

By...

Reader Charles H requested that I do a roundup of Clean Blend Overdrives - which resulted in the following selection. Most Bass Overdrives have Clean-Blend by default - while all the ones I have selected here are more specifically Guitar Overdrives. I personally don’t find myself needing to use Clean Blend so much - but I can totally understand why so many players find this functionality useful or even essential. The Blend knob is variously labelled Blend, Clean, Dry and Mix. I’ve ...

I am generally a huge fan of Keith Vonderhulls’ BYOC Pedal Imprint - where his Crown Jewel Multi-Drive is one of my favourite pedals of all time. Build Your Own Clone is obviously mostly a DIY Pedal Kit brand - while all the BYOC’s I have acquired to date have been fully assembled by professionals like Alchemy Audio and GearGasStore.

Big Tone Music Brewery is very much Keith’s Pro sister-range to BYOC - with a series of premium edition pedals fully and carefully ...

I am a little late to the Animalizzer - which Ricardo ’Rikk’ Cabecas officially launched in May of last year. Readers will know I’m a big fan of extended-functionality and extended-range pedals in particular. And the Animalizzer is pretty much definitely the most shapable of all the different Muff types out there in the wild - certainly at this size of enclosure.

In fact so shapable is the Animalizzer that it can be used as a sort Boost, Overdrive and Distortion in ...

This article really speaks to my own personal preferences in pedal-acquisitions, and how I’m always somewhat more drawn towards extended-range - and typically enhanced and evolved editions over and above the stock originals.

In many cases those more versatile editions are even rarer than the classic vintage originals. Meaning I always try to secure those more difficult-to-find examples first. On this occasion I still intend to grab a LM741 opamp early grey or yellow variety ...

The following article is composed of an assortment of essentially unrelated Overdrives which have recently caught my eye - albeit a couple of these have been around for a while.

The only common element here is that each of these has a distinctive bite to its output and correspondingly interesting textural character.

3 of these are multi-stage clipping drives, where two have separate controls for 2 of their stages - namely the AJ Peat Screaming Flamingo and Balaguer Fission ...

I would like to start by apologising to those builders who didn’t get a pedal featured in Wednesday’s final 32 Key Guitar Effects Pedal Types article. Know that I hold you all in the highest of esteem - and that said overview is/was simply a somewhat temporary and fleeting snapshot of my current preferences on that day - with a particular emphasis towards versatility and variety delivered by a single pedal. So some pedals are typically more narrowly focused and specialist, while ...

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...