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 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 really ...

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 ...

So a lot has changed during the month of April - we’ve had some thoroughly exciting and invigorating new product launches, while three of my American acquisitions are seemingly lost by USPS - hopefully they will materialise some day, but for one of them there have been no tracking updates for over a month now - which is somewhat alarming. As the eternal optimist, I can only hope that things right themselves eventually. I had already determined that my pedal-acquisition would go on semi-...

I’ve long been a fan of Tom’s even though the only one of his creations I have to date is the Chase Bliss Audio Edition of his Generation Loss. I long considered his Moment Machine Pitch-Shifting Workstation, before I decided it was probably a little too large for my needs, and I had the recent Outward V2 on my imminent acquisitions list.

It’s as well really that I hadn’t hit the trigger sooner on that one, as Tom is obviously being influenced by the same ...

I am a touch sad to read that after 13 great years of innovation and independent creativity - the power couple at the heart of Dwarfcraft Devices - Benjamin Hinz and Louise Woletz Hinz - have decided to move on to pastures new. It seems both have landed their dream jobs very recently - which will likely give them more stability and a better quality of life than they have hitherto enjoyed through making pedals - obviously with the current economic uncertainty it’s great to have a positive ...

I had hoped to do regular monthly updates on how the various NAMM-announced pedal releases and other newer additions were impacting my own pedal-chain choices. Yet we all know how this year has gone - obviously impacted by numerous delays brought on by the Social Distancing required to counter the spread of Coronavirus / Covid-19.

Because of parts supply and resourcing issues, most 2020 NAMM pedals have been delayed to some degree. When there is uncertainty as to when the next ...

I recently featured the Dr Scientist Dusk and stated that I was pretty much 90% sure that it was the right filter pedal to be rotated in on my current Micro-Tron III slot. I’ve seen quite a few videos on the Flower Pedals Hosta Wah Filter too, and a couple of other examples which are sort of niggling at me as to whether I’m fully properly informed. Ever being the one to make sure that I do the appropriate amount of due diligence in the process of selecting the ideal pedal for me, I ...

I’ve been avidly following the development of this pedal from the start - via periodic glimpses Ryan Clarke has been sharing on social media. I’m a long term Dr Scientist fan and Ryan and Tanya always have a fresh new approach on things which makes their pedals so appealing.

When I first saw the Dusk I considered it a pretty decent rotation alternative for my Mu-Tron Micro-Tron III Envelope Filter - which I mostly actually use as an auto-wah - and it is quite brilliant at ...