As reported on this site a couple of times already - James Brown, celebrated 5150 amp engineer and circuit designer extraordinaire, sold his Amptweaker brand to Alpha Distribution earlier this year after he accepted a new post at Fender’s EVH Gear Division, Amp Department specifically.

Amptweaker has been best known for its high gain pedals - in particular the FatMetal and TightMetal series - but also the TightDrive and TightRock / BigRock Overdrives. The range had sprawled into ...

This has been a long time coming for some - with just the merest of glimpses at Winter NAMM - where I feel the few boxes we saw there were surely empty shells - as I never witnessed any actual play-through. Considering how much of a perfectionist Dave Friedman is it’s all understandable really as we know he would not release anything he’s not 100% happy with.

So it’s taken the best part of the year to tweak and tune this one to perfection. In terms of where it sits - ...

Sitek Guitar Electronics makes 3 different Boost pedals - the Nursie Transparent Booster, Vixen Germanium Booster, and this updated V2 Caffeine Booster which kind of sits in between the Clean Boost of the Nursie, and the more Harmonic Gritty Boost of the Vixen.

The V1 edition of the Caffeine simply just had Level and Gain controls, while there are some new innovations on the V2 version. You can obviously see that 2 x toggle-switches have been added. The left-hand toggle-switch allows ...

So this is one of most significant works in a while, and carries on the legacy of two of my most popular all-time articles on the 12 Degrees of Saturation - the Original that evolved in the early months of 2017, and the follow-up which materialised in September of 2018.

I obviously deal with a lot of reader inquiries pretty much on a daily basis, and one of the more popular lines of inquiry has been about overdrives. And while Josh Scott attests to the fact that there are only 5 core ...

I was momentarily confused this morning when the Sweetwater Video alert popped up for the new Jackson Audio Asabi. The pedal looked identical to the now obviously former El Guapo - on the surface the only difference was the name change. Pricing of the unit stays at the exact same level as the El Guapo or $350/£350.

While delving a little further into the subject it became obvious that Brad Jackson and colleagues had lifted the functionality from the forthcoming Jackson Audio ...

Many of you will be familiar with one Kai Tachibana - the engineer behind all the significant Nobels ODR circuits - including the original 1993 ODR-1 and latest ODR-Mini and ODR-1 BC V2 editions. In my recent ’Nobels Overdrives and Alternatives’ article for the first sweep I totally managed to overlook Kai’s Nordland Electronics imprint - it just didn’t hit my radar for whatever reason. Fortunately I am lucky to have some very diligent readers and Morgan P quickly took ...

The catalyst to this post is of course the brand new 3-Germanium Transistor Queen Bee Fuzz - which Mike has recently launched via his Custom Shop. I was really just waiting for its price to materialise before sharing this ’best of’ roundup.

Despite Mike’s idiosyncrasies and several dubious outbursts as such I’ve regardless always admired his circuit-designs and his overall highly consistent quality of work. In fact I own 8 of his pedals to date - while only 3 in...

I’ve had something of a David Gilmour and Pete Cornish fixation of late - obviously interrupted by homage to and celebration of the late great Edward Lodewijk Van Halen. There is just one final closing chapter on the Pete Cornish phenomena which is my listing of near match and sound-alike alternatives.

Pete Cornish pedals - the neater Deluxe line in particular are some of the very finest effects pedals ever created in terms of their beautifully and richly nuanced output - and ...

It’s about time I did a feature on the Other Green Overdrive - which has long since become a firm favourite of Nashville session players. It’s very much a mostly flat-mids overdrive as such where its overall output profile is quite different to the better known TS808 - with quite a bit more low end present and much less in the way of compression - so a somewhat fatter more open-pored sort of overdrive.

Most are fans of the extra low-end body, while several players have ...

It’s nice to see that the Wampler Tumnus Mini has some company now. Brian further underlines his ’King of Drive’ credentials with 2 further smart diminutive derivations. The Belle Overdrive is yet another of his takes on the Nobels ODR Natural Overdrive. His very first derivation was the Underdog, a take on the ODR-S 3-Band EQ variety, which was developed for Brad Paisley - and after a 100 pedal limited run became the right-hand side of the Signature Dual-Channel Wampler ...