Mad Professor strips out the Sweet Honey Overdrive portion from its original mid-size Super Black Fender Blackface style Preamp - for a more streamlined and pedalboard-friendly experience.

The Super Black Mini retains the main controls :

Super Black Mini Controls - Bass Cut Switch, Compression Switch, Presence, Volume, Gain, Bass, Middle, Treble.

Where when you compare it to the original :

Super Black Original Controls - MAIN } Bass, Middle, Treble, Gain, Volume, Presence, Bass ...

This is the 2nd Iteration for this article - where we go from a selection of 13 to 16.

I landed 4 of these these last year - the Crazy Tube Circuits Heatseeker, Flattley Outlaw, Fortin Kali, and Tubesteader Gainlord.

And two early this year - the Car Martin PlexiRanger and Seymour Duncan Diamondhead

We have 4 distinct types of pedals here across 4 format sizes (Compact / Mid-Horizontal / Mid-Vertical / Large) :

1. Dedicated Dual Channel Plexi + JCM800 Overdrive / Distortion with

I have and love my Shnobel Daily Driver pedal - and had long intended to get the enhanced Daily Driver Boost Version - which adds in a smart Clean Boost and Order Switch. I had intended to get a white edition of that for a while which hasn’t happened yet!

When I first saw the Dumbbell Driver from afar - I thought it somewhat reminiscent of the Cosmodio Instruments modification of JHS’s NOTADÜMBLË and Blammo Electronics’ TNYDÜMBLË - which I own - both 6-knob variants - with 2 banks of 3 ...

I must start by congratulating Phoebe on her excellent artwork here - which is one of her best works to date. Where that all-green metallic flake finish looks so fabulous ’in the flesh’ and is beautifully accentuated by a matching green Halo LED.

This is my second favourite looking Flattley pedal after the recent all-red Outlaw. I’m really loving these tone-on-tone designs.

And as for the core voicing of this device - it really is one of the most vibrant and amp-like experiences I have ...

This was one of my priority targets for last year - where it landed at Northern Stompboxes towards the end of that year - and I was determined to land it as early as possible this year.

Controls - Q1 Gain, Blue Button Fuzz / Distortion Switch, White Button Fixed High Pass Filter Switch, V] Volume, A] Attenuate Input, C] Q2 Bias, F] First Order Low Pass Filter.
 
Key Features

• boost, overdrive, distortion, fuzz circuit
• large capacitors for all the thickness
• fixed high-pass filter
• first-

On first encountering the Dumblifier - I was reminded of the long-since defunct Van Wealden Royal Overdrive (Mick Taylor favourite) which featured 6 of those skirted knobs across the pedal - versus the 5 of the Dumblifier. It looked to me like a deluxe evolved version of that pedal - made more compact and with a much larger featured set.

The Dumblifier benefits from no less than 22 controls - which cover most every surface of the pedal - which has 3 footswitches too within that really neat ...

Readers will know that I’m a huge fan of Sinvertek’s N5 / MGAT series - where I own each of the key editions released to date - since 2017.

This is the 3rd and ultimate edition of the MGAT-1 MIAB circuit - which retains the same topology as the other 2 MGAT-1’s - but slightly repurposes some of those controls - and aligns them more with specific Marshall Amp Profiles.

Controls - Volume, Marshall Amp Frequency Character : JCM / JTM / SLP & JVM, Gain, Low Frequency Response : Full / ...

I already thought we had witnessed Peak Full-Range Marshall back in 2022 with the original MGAT-1, then Mr Wu significantly improved that circuit in 2024, and the new one promises to be even better!

So far we’ve only had a teaser on Instagram - where I got the EVO pic from - while there is no web page yet or much in the way of further details.

Like the MGAT-5 - the first batch will contain especially mojo components - so it’s worth getting involved early on.

The actual control ...

New Pedals in the Class of 2025 Pedal-Chain Snapshot = 41

[OCTOBER]  = 9

[NOVEMBER] = 6

[MARCH] = 5

[SEPTEMBER] = 5

[AUGUST] = 4

[JANUARY] = 3

[FEBRUARY]  = 3

[APRIL] = 2

[JUNE] = 2

[MAY] = 1

[JULY] = 1

[A-Z by Brand]

1. Becos FX CompIQ Pro Yuna Soft Knee Blackmer VCA Studio Style Compressor [SEPTEMBER]
2. Blue Colander Grimrobe Dual Cascaded Super Rat [OCTOBER]
3. Blue FX Devices Fuzz Fields Ultimate Modulated Fuzz [SEPTEMBER]
4. Boss RT-2 Rotary Ensemble Leslie / Rotary Speaker