Readers will know me as a somewhat fuzz fanatic - with roughly half my collection dedicated to fuzz pedals, with over 30 varieties of Tone Bender, and more than 50 each of Fuzz Face and Big Muff varieties - mostly in the compact enclosure format - but medium, mini and large executions too.

I consider there to be 7 major varieties of Big Muff - as follows :

Triangle (1969) | Ram’s Head (1972/3) | Op Amp (1978) | Civil War (1993) | Green Russian (1994) | Black Russian (...

This edition comes rather hot on the heels of the recent 12 Degrees of Overdrive version as many readers’ inquiries questioned a couple of missing categories there - which I explained would rather figure within the Distortion contingent which is present here in all its glory!

As always, these is some considerable amount of grey science at play here - best typified by the Big Muff and Rat circuits - which are both very much distortions as well as fuzz varieties. I have 3 x 12 ...

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 ...

I’ve had something of a David Gilmour and Pete Cornish fixation of late - obviously interrupted by homage to and celebration of the late great Edward Lodewijk Van Halen. There is just one final closing chapter on the Pete Cornish phenomena which is my listing of near match and sound-alike alternatives.

Pete Cornish pedals - the neater Deluxe line in particular are some of the very finest effects pedals ever created in terms of their beautifully and richly nuanced output - 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 ...

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...

My introduction to Toneczar was courtesy of another somewhat underground legend - one Dennis Kayzer of Hamburg - who demo’d a lot of Ed’s pedals a good 7-10 years ago. I of course only came across those rather more recently - or some 4/5 years ago actually - where I developed a fondness for the Openhaus High Gain Distortion and Vault High Gain Fuzz in particular. I’m not 100% clear on the provenance of the Openhaus in terms of which thundering high gain amp tones its ...

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...