Most of you who read this blog will know by now that Joel Korte worked for/with Zachary Vex from 2008 to 2013. While he was there he was responsible for the design and development of the Instant Lo-Fi Junky - which in many ways was the forerunner to the Warped Vinyl project.

In any case and while at Zvex, Joel picked up a taste for that brand’s flagship and all-time consistently best-selling Fuzz Factory pedal - which started out as a modified Germanium Fuzz Face which then gained a ...

There are broadly speaking two main camps of Germanium Fuzz Face style pedals - both are obviously warm and expressive with great guitar-volume-knob clean-up, while one type tends to be slightly more gritty and articulate, and the other rather smoother and more violin-like. The obvious comparison that springs to mind is that classic smooth Eric Johnson style of tone - which the Sitek Fuzzie delivers particularly well.

Most Germanium Fuzz Faces have only two knobs, the occasional has 3 ...

The catalyst to this post is of course the brand new 3-Germanium Transistor Queen Bee Fuzz - which Mike has recently launched via his Custom Shop. I was really just waiting for its price to materialise before sharing this ’best of’ roundup.

Despite Mike’s idiosyncrasies and several dubious outbursts as such I’ve regardless always admired his circuit-designs and his overall highly consistent quality of work. In fact I own 8 of his pedals to date - while only 3 in...

October has proven to be another fairly significant month - both in terms of new pedal releases / arrivals and my own pedal-chain evolution. I’m also in the midst of a Vick Audio phase - having relatively recently acquired most of the key pedals in that range - including all 5 Tau Series Muff variants - which were all in my chain together for a big chunk of October.

There were a number of very significant releases/arrivals this month for me - including the Boss GT-1000 CORE and ...

The above visual actually dates back to July of this year when I composed it in anticipation of what was supposed to be my very first Buffalo FX pedal acquisition - the Reticon Flanger. I had been meaning to do a run on Buffalo FX pedals eventually and the impending arrival of said rare breed of Flanger - limited to only 100 units, seemed like the perfect occasion. In anticipation of said arrival which I pre-ordered along with another 80 or so unlucky souls (less than 20 were delivered to the ...

Following on from the high ticket-price CBA/Meris Automatone CXM 1978 Studio Reverb article it’s nice to be at the other end of the scale for the new JHS 3 Series Range. It’s quite obvious that Josh Scott has been influenced by his featuring the BBE, Danelectro and Joyo budget pedal ranges on his JHS Pedal Show YouTube channel.

I’m the kind of guy that typically holds these sorts of things up to a little more scrutiny than most - in order to give you the inside track ...

I’ll jump straight to the obvious here in calling this Boss’s contender to go against current category leader and long-term reigning champ - the Line 6 Helix HX STOMP Multi Effects Processor and Amp Modeller - which interestingly retails for $599 in the USA, but only around £399 on this side of the pond. While starting RRP tag for the GT-1000 CORE will be £615 (vs GT-1000 currently retailing at £799UK/$999USA). In fact prices are weirdly quite disparate between UK,...

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...

For the fourth / FGIV iteration of his Fuzz God Series - Ben returns once more to the horizontal BB-style format that most of the predecessors were encapsulated in. This time around we get 3 combinable footswitches so you can add both Germanium Diode Octave / Octavia effect ’8VE’ as well as ’Wrath’ Oscillation. Those two modes are not fully independent as they can only be deployed in conjunction with the main Fuzz voicing - you can though stack either with the Fuzz or ...

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 ...