Back in 2003, Dan Coggin’s Dinosaural created a silicon transistor circuit which sort of combined elements of a Tube Sceamer and a Tone Bender - and hence the ’Tube Bender’ moniker. I believe the earliest models were in Silver sort of 1590BB style enclosures, and the later ones were in Black.

From 2003-2007 a total of around 150 were made. And in the intervening years several takes on that circuit emerged - including the Aion FX Wyvern in 2020, and the Drunk Beaver T-Rex a year later - ...

In the wake of my recent RangeMaster rundown I thought it would be fun to list those stand-alone units which ended up in my reference collection. I have a huge affinity for treble booster - where the majority I own are on combination pedals - including Plexi-Range types and Fuzz-Ranger types - overall around 30 treble boosters of various guises, and mostly in Germanium format.

My purely stand-alone RangeMasters / Treble Boosters kind of number 14 - while the CTC Constellation is kind of a ...

After the quiet comfort of February, March unleashed an avalanched of work - both in terms of new releases and acquisitions, but especial in the field of Guitar and Pedal expos - where I attended 3 within a month - first The Birmingham Guitar Show at Cranmore Park, then the London Synth and Pedal Expo at Studio 9294, Hackney Wick - and then back to Birmingham for the Noise Maker Market at Centrala, Digbeth - all grand events.

I burned myself out a little this month, and came back willingly empty...

This project has been a long time in the making - I actually started off this compilation properly last autumn, and then have iterated the final selection a number of times since then - before reaching this final format. I apologise to anyone whom I’ve inadvertently left out - I still have a number of Octave Fuzzes to require - that task is never ending!

I own around 80 octave fuzzes so far - and this is near enough half of those - where I’ve mostly leant into compact editions - and ...

The Bashtanka is a mostly unadulterated take on the recent EHX Big Muff 2 circuit. Vitalii wanted to explore the potential of that circuit, with additional fixes for Low-end filter (e.g. 0.7Hz filtering in the original gain section looks odd for an audio circuit and might cause issues); Vitalii moved those to 15Hz.

The key mod is a tone switch which sits between the Big Muff tone-stack and a simple Low Pass Filter (louder, no mids scoop). On the components side - Vitalii deployed MC4558 ...

If you read my recent PastFX OG-1 piece - you would know that I initially intended to pick up an original long-dash OD-1 with the very original 14-pin JRC3403 OpAmp onboard. There’s hardly any of those available in the wild - and typically they are battered and way over-priced. I had intended to get one and have it modified with an additional tone-stack - as I always felt that was a key element missing from the original, and one of the reasons for the greater success of the Ibanez TS808 Tube ...

My friend Olivier asked me to do an updated rundown of my favourite choices for RangeMaster / Treble Booster - and I picked out 12 of the best viable candidates.

There’s a few honourable mentions for pedals that didn’t quite make the final 12 or have been discontinued since I last did this exercise.

These are still worth seeking out, while they are all discontinued :

• Bispell Tor (unspec. Si)
• JAM Pedals Rooster Ltd (CV7003 / OC44)
• Keeley Java Boost OC44 Edition
• KMA Machines

February is always something of a lull - particularly after the hyper busy NAMM-inflected January. This month is the doldrums of the calendar where not much gets releases. I did though manage to land a decent selection of a dozen pedals - obviously some from the previous year. With the Sinvertek MGAT-1 EVO being the standout pedal landed - where the Klowra Gnash and Wampler Golden Jubilee were pretty spectacular too. 3 x Klowra pedals on the board this month - all excellent!

Of course there...

As always, Vitalii has upgraded some of the key components here and added a couple of extra really useful mods.

Controls - Volume, Tone, Drive, EQ Mod : Modern / Flat / Stock, Clipping Mod : Modern / LED / Stock.

The EQ mod delivers : stock - deep scoop, flat and modern with less pronounced mid cut. The Clipping toggle delivers : stock symmetrical Si KD522, modern asymmetrical Si ITT + BAYP-95 on one side and ITT on the other, LED is 2 x LEDs. 

The Chernihiv carries a Vintage SGS ...