Spaceman Launch Day is always a mix of excitement and trepidation. But truly I’ve been less afflicted since Zak started producing more readily available Standard production variants. I wasn’t aware until I saw the head-to-head of the Sputnik III insides as to what degree the Standard and Limited editions varied. Obviously the differences are somewhat significantly more than than the knobs and enclosure treatment - and in fact the Standard varieties tend to have more of the tiny SMT ...

And so as my 7th month of isolation draws to a close - the frequency of new product releases has begun to accelerate again after the lull of summer. The month started on fine form with the slightly surprising snap arrival of he new Jackson Audio El Guapo, next we had the Walrus Audio Julia that always should have been - in the guise of the new and improved Julianna Chorus, then the Zander Circuitry Compact Siclone, Boss OC-5 Octave, somewhat delayed Big Ear Albie, the EHX Pitch Fork+, Red Witch...

August was quite a slow month in many ways - particularly for those of us clinging to the last vestiges of hope towards the arrival of a Buffalo FX Reticon Flanger. That now seems a very distant pipe-dream indeed as reports indicate that Steve Painter is suffering from some horribly debilitating condition that prevents him from doing any physical activities for the foreseeable future. He’s not officially responded to any communiqués since June 30th - the last day many of us heard ...

This post was inspired by a series of confluent events which impacted the use of slot #4 in my pedal-chain. Quite a while back I went through a phase of Mini CryBaby Wah Pedals - first the standard CBM95, and then the more advanced CBM535Q with additional controls. I was quite fond of the 535Q Mini for a while but eventually became somewhat frustrated with it and decided to switch to auto-wah / envelope filtering instead.

My auto-wah as such of choice for the longest time was the Mu-...

I will start by rightfully thanking Tom for allowing me to participate in this second launch phase and granting me all the access I needed to delve deep under the skin of his highly innovative pedal. If you read my original April 28th Arcades feature you will note that I was smitten by this formidable Multi-FX unit right from the first encounter. I had spent a very considerable chunk of 2019 getting stuck into a variety of glitch style effects and associated multi-fx pedals - including the ...

July has largely been a very decent month for me and culminated with the arrival of my twin new Expresso FX Dual Custom Fuzzes and my annual white whale as such - the Chase Bliss Audio Automatone Preamp MKII on this occasion.

It looks like 4 pedals failed to get over the line within the appointed time period - the longest-ranging of which is my Evil Pumpkin Modded DS-1 - which has been en-route from Kiev since June 12th and which I surely hoped should have landed by now.

My ...

The spiritual heir to Lovetone launches yet another monster big-box masterpiece. I’ve covered several of Glou Glou’s pedals on this blog - including the Rendez-Vous Dual Filter/Phaser in my piece on French Pedal Builders, and more recently the Pralines Fuzzy Quad Parallelized Resonant Filter and Moutarde Four Voice PLL Synth.

Glou-Glou really seems to specialise in applying multi-band filters and envelope followers onto any of the key effects types. These big boxes are ...

June hasn’t been a particularly kind month to me - in fact it’s been something of a difficult period - I was going to call this piece ’The Darkness Lingers’ but didn’t really want that particular NLP on this blog - which I try to keep as positive as is practically possible.

A number of ventures and collaborations I was working on this month came a cropper when the other collaborating parties somewhat inexplicably and suddenly ended their involvement - ...

I’ve been a fan of Ryan and Tanya Clarke for the longest time, and currently have 4 of their best in my collection, with a couple more on the wishlist. My first and to-date all-time favourite Dr Scientist pedal is the exceptional Frazz Dazzler 2-Channel Fuzz - which while wholly unique, most equate with a Muff style of fuzz, yet for me it’s more of an extended range / high-gain Rat.

So the Frazz Dazzler was my first, then came the BitQuest and next my Gold Bar Edition The ...

May was the month that several things finally slotted into place - all my missing / presumed lost USA orders finally landed as did a few other pedals which had been somewhat lingering in the wild - so May delivered a pretty decent pedal yield overall in the end. I also got to be involved in a couple of exciting up-and-coming brands - Kuro Custom Audio of Italy and MidValleyFX of USA. I’ve already published a feature on the excellent Kuro Akuma Fiery Fuzz as featured on slot #5, and hope ...