Metal Players have for years been using mid-hump overdrives into the front of their high gain amps - and Frost Giant has kind of gone to town here - in delivering 3 different voicings for maximum impact. Takes on the TS9 and SD-1, as well as a 3rd supercharged ’Mourning Star’ variant which ups things to another level!

Controls - Volume, Gain, High, Mid, Low, Mode : TS9 / Mourning Star / SD-1.

I feel this is a really great mid-hump overdrive on its own - while it’s seemingly mostly been ...

This feature has been a long time coming. I have somewhere around 60 to 70 Marshall-style Pedals in my collection - while this selection mostly features Dual-Channel or Drive + Boost Pedals - which cover you both for Marshall Plexi and JCM800 flavours - actual and ballpark.

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

We have 4 distinct types of pedals here across 4 format sizes (Compact / Mid-Horizontal / ...

So we have 3 direct Colorsound One Knob Fuzz Box derivatives, and one sort of somewhat adjacent one in the guise of the Weird Noise Fuzz It. These are all essentially mostly 2-stage kind of high gain Silicon Fuzz Faces of a sort  - but very much in the low-end accentuated Doom category (more of the low-end frequencies get passed through eh circuits rather than being fitlered out).

The original One Knob Colorsound Fuzz had 1 x BC109 and 1 x BC108 Silicon High Gain Transistors - ’C’ types, ...

When I first read the blurb for the new Frost Giant Osiris - including the inclusion of the D9B Clipping Diode and 9 to 18 internal Voltage doubling - I though this was yet another take on a transparent / Klone style overdrive, while although this shares some similarities - this is a distinct and slightly wider ranging overdrive - even touching on crunchy distortion tones.

Controls - Volume, Gain, Depth (906Hz Cut / Boos), Blend (Overdrive Intensity).

So the Depth and Blend controls are...

^ 2022 Final Arrangement - December

So the time has come again to to the final reckoning of the layout and composition of this year’s ultimate pedal chain arrangement. I’ve introduced a new ’⚓’ symbol into the visual - which indicates those Slots / Pedals that are unchanged from last year’s Class of 2021 arrangement. That element really is testament to how much has changed between years. It’s also indicative of how much I love those particular pedals - and pretty much find them ...

As I’ve just done all the category overviews / best of genre rundowns - you can refer to those for all the individual pedal details - most have full reviews on this site too - here I will simply lay down the longlist - and explain why I picked those top 3 here - so just the details for the 3 overall winners!

I normally try to single out around 40 each year in the final overview - but it also depends on how many can fit the ’jigsaw’ of the visual.

There were 4 pedals in the full longlist...

So for the end of year Fuzz selection the only pedal of note that came a little too late to be included in this roundup was the very recent Reeves Electro BlackHatSound Deluxe Wedge - of which only 15 units have been made so far. Markus has promised me I can get copper insides when the next batch comes around - so I can complete my set!

Other than that everything of note that I’m aware of is included here in this selection. Again I own most of these - while there are still some down on the ...

Obviously the big Distortion story of the year for me was my recent Full Metal Racket High Gain Distortion roundup - and roughly one third of this selection was in service of that feature alone. Even then I didn’t get to everything I wanted to as a couple or so builders weren’t particularly responsive. This is often quite a thankless task of revolving and closing doors - in any case case I’m proud of what I managed to accomplish regardless - and some of the candidates are quite superb.

The ...

Boy have I had some delivery troubles this month! - with pedals taking an absolute age to materialise - being held up at various junctures - including a now protracted period in customs clearance. In fact one of these took 3 weeks no less to make it through UK customs, and then another week and a half to get to my local delivery office - which is just insane. Hitherto customs clearance has never been more than a handful of days - occasionally you get outliers of a week or two - but it’s ...