My readers will know that I’ve featured Joe’s Pedals a fair few number of times on this site - in reference to where I acquired several of my own pedals from. My first introduction to said boutique was in search of Marc Ahlfs’ Skreddy Pedals. In fact 5 of my 8 Skreddy’s have come from Joe’s and I would have gotten more had those been in stock when I needed them - such is always the luck of the draw with pedal acquisitions - in that you cannot always get everything ...

The precursor to this article goes back quite a while actually to conversations I had with the wonderful Alex Millar (Zander Circuitry) at a number of guitar shows. Those chats as such included discussions on knobs and form factor / enclosure size - and while I’m not laying any claims to influencing the recently evolved Zander Circuitry boxes I still like to think I played some tiny part in that decision making process.

This style of article ’Maverick Inflection’ is a...

I’ve been peripherally aware of Mike Vickery’s Vick Audio for a long time now, and have to date included his Mount Pleasant Blues Breaker, Overdriver Power Boost, and Tree of Life Overdrive in their respective category roundups.

This article was partly triggered by two events really. Following on from my doing a feature on Steve Mac’s Pedalboard (Aussie Pink Floyd) it heightened and reawakened my interest in everything David Gilmour - which led to my article on Pete ...

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 ...

I frequently get asked to recommend a great all-rounder every*man kind of fuzz pedal, and over the years as my own collection as grown - so has the roster of usual suspects in my recommendations, I felt that it was about time to have the definitive list up on this site so I could simply refer people to that.

There’s still quite a few more outliers here - and for reasons of symmetry I judiciously decided to omit them from inclusion on this occasion - but there are certainly a few ...

I count myself one of the few lucky ones to have been switched on fairly early to Joel Korte’s side-project - Abracadabra Audio - mostly because I follow/ed the other key collaborator - Gabriel Tanaka’s Best Guitar Effects Blog site - which I am delighted to see has returned after several months’ hiatus.

Abracadabra Audio was a loose Artist Collective headed up by Joel and Gabriel - which brought in a number of different Illustrative and Technical Artists to do the ...

The Lucky No. 13 Fuzz was Mike’s first proper officially branded Vick Audio release and was last on sale around October 2014 - obviously some years ago now. The fuzz derives its name from the fact that both Mike and his wife were born on the 13th, and got married on the 13th. I’m a fan of ’13’ too as my darling sister was born on that self same date also.

In terms of pedigree and provenance, the Lucky 13 circuit is a fairly high-gain 2 x Silicon Transistor type ...

This article was obviously inspired by last Friday’s That Pedal Show (TPS) episode with similar title. In watching that I thought - hang on a minute - I have all these pedals, with the Chase Bliss Audio Automatone Preamp MKII the most recently added. So before the episode - 3 were already in my pedal-chain - the Chase Bliss Audio Brothers Analog Gainstage since it first came out, the relatively recent Jackson Audio Golden Boy, and of course my brand new Automatone Preamp MKII.

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It brings me great pleasure to be able to showcase more of the great work of my good friend Sof from Expresso FX - whom I frequently refer to as the ’Transistor Charmer / Whisperer’. Sof was one of my first significant pedal builder contacts - and it seems fitting that I’m featuring him again - almost exactly a year on from my first full overview of his Expresso FX Range.

I had acquired and lived long-term with 4 of Sof’s pedals before I felt I was sufficiently ...

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 ...