The Gain Box was very evidently designed for the 4 Channels / Voices to be stacked, each individual voice isn’t particularly strong on its own, but gains significant potency when combined with one or two or all of the others.

I would really have preferred a little more output volume, and probably a Tilt EQ vs the current LPF style Filter for more overall oomph! I started with all dials at Noon, and then added or subtracted as appropriate - adding Presets and Combinations as I progressed ...

So this new H9 is essentially a fully-loaded Single Core variant of the H90. The larger H90 predecessor allows you to deploy 2 x Stereo Effects simultaneously - and hence is referred to as a Dual-Core Multi-Effects Processor. Where the new Gen 2 H9 has all the same key features and functions as the H90 - but can only deploy a single Stereo Effect at a time - hence Single-Core.

The original unit had a cool looking but pretty useless onboard interface - which was mostly saved by the Bluetooth...

I’m quite proud of my visual here which has the new Mini Fumble Boost encased in a Kansas City Chiefs helmet - for somewhat obvious reasons! While I am a little mystified that there would be such a high demand for the ’wrong!’ Boost - I’m sure you’re all familiar with the John Mayer ’Box It Later’ boost mixup / saga.

I have 2 versions of the NOTADÜMBLË - the JHS one, and the Blammo Compact TNYDÜMBLË editions - as pictured below. I actually quite like the BBC-1 boost, but I have other boosts...

I recall the original Core Series very well - and picked up those 4 original compacts - per the below original range visual. You had the Edge, ODI, Rail, and ROUS (per bottom row of visual) - where 3 of those have now been revived and enhanced.

Pettyjohn then did a number of additional very limited small batch custom compact editions - which covered most of the same territory as these 11 new editions. I feel a couple of these might be brand new - certainly the Moss X Fuzz. ...

May has been a little bit of strange month - lots of delays really, and waiting for pedals to land.

As inevitably happens most months - much was delayed this month, and I was unable to complete some of the larger articles - they will need to wait until next month, there’s certainly lots of projects in progress. Where new and imminent arrivals kind of scuppered several intended projects - hopefully they can be completed in June.

The first event I’m attending this month is tomorrow - as a micropub ...

It seems quite timely that I just recently covered off the Caroline Parabola Pawnshop Tremolo - with its lush, warm-sounding higher gain preamp. Apparently the very same preamp that’s also in the Caroline Météore Lo-Fi Reverb. Caroline Guitar wisely decided to give this excellent preamp a solo outing!

So this new overdrive pedal further celebrates and honours Aaron Graves, who has long been associated with the brand. We get quite a beautifully warm and granular overdrive here with 2 x gain ...

I’ve known Holy Island Audio since the fabulous Stourbridge FX Expo back in 2022. And I’ve encountered Gwion a good 20 times throughout the intervening years - but somewhat embarrassingly still hadn’t landed some of those fantastic full-on sounding pedals.

It seemed that whenever I encountered Gwion at a show - he never had any stock of the very pedal I was after at the time. As for most small brands - Gwion operates on a Small Batch methodology - but more from an order-window perspective -...

I first covered ThunderTomate back in 2019 - when I did my ’Best of Spanish Guitar Pedals’ feature - and where ThunderTomate was seemingly in short supply by then - about to go on hiatus presumably. I particularly liked the look of the Dani Gomez / AC30 Custom which I featured in that article. But never came across one that was available for sale. A few ThunderTomate pedals landed on Reverb.com sporadically in and around 2019 - but not really the ones I was the keenest on, and then all of a ...

I’m known for my love of Multi-Gain boxes - and this is another great innovation in that area - a really smartly engineered gain machine - with all-analog sound generation and signal routing, but with some digital controls, and 3 Presets onboard.

You have two main Operational Modes - Series and Parallel, where the Series Mode is essentially Dry + Overdrive into Fuzz + Distortion, and Parallel is each of them piled on top of the other!

Controls - Level [digital], Filter : 1k > 16k [...