Probably the strongest selection of the year - each one of these is amazing and sounds killer. But then agin similar was true of the Overdrives. I’m very much a fuzz fanatic - so his selection has to take the edge - what a selection!

This selection includes 3 from EarthQuaker Devices, 2 from Drunk Beaver, 2 from Fjord Fuzz, and 2 from ThorpyFX.

It also includes the likely pedal of the year - within a selection of 10 award winners here - these are so good - I could have labelled even ...

So I’m a huge fan of high gain Doomy Fuzzes - with already favourites including the Blackhawk Balrog and the Lichtlaerm Altar.

I’m delighted to report that the fierce and amazingly textured High Gain MOSRAWR Fuzz is wholly up to the task too. Each of my now 3 favourites hits slightly differently - with the Balrog still the King of Sludge - it just has that sticky low end that delivers exactly the right texture for that. Make no mistake - these are all top-tier Doom Fuzzes - with ...

Another super busy month for me - particularly towards the end - with numerous large scale articles out this week. That also coincided with my busiest week of the year for my other day job. Meaning that I was up until 4-5 in the morning every day - just to keep up with my commitments.

I was already somewhat shattered and burned out before I even got to this super busy period - and it’s a relief that all that work has now been completed on schedule.

I’m especially proud of my work on the Bucket ...

My close association with Thorpy started back in late September of 2018 - at the now defunct Olympia UK Guitar Show. He was the first pedal maker I reached out to, and the first I connected with.

Since then ThorpyFX Pedals have become my 3rd most populous selection after Boss and Drunk Beaver. Those 3 brands alone contribute over 200 pedals to my reference collection!

The fact that I’m now at 31 ThorpyFX Pedals is a major milestone - and features every mainline MKII pedal Thorpy has made. ...

This has turned out to be something of a Thorpy month! - following on from the recent Manson Supermassive Black Fuzz and 3 Thorpy acquisitions this month - indeed the Supermassive is also engineered by Thorpy!

I thought I should do a quick retrospective of pedals and projects that Thorpy has been involved in.

I selected my favourite pedal from those 4 brands (some singular options!) :

• Redbeard Effects : Bearded Vulture Direct Drive with Octave
• Victory Amps : V1 The Jack Guthrie

The Drunk Beaver Rat-into-Muff Disambiguation first materialised as a 3-knob type back in 2021 - simply with Distortion, Level, and Tone controls - and an intriguing cool militaristic army green enclosure with black pistol graphic.

I always liked that version - but at times it could be a little muddy, and I sometime felt it could have done with a bit more volume. Which is a large part of what is new in the V2!

We now get 5 Controls - with the same core 3 controls - here named Tone, Gain...

What we have here is an incredibly potent fuzz - consisting of 3 x OpAmps, 3 x Silicon Transistors, and 2 x Blue LEDs - so the core fuzz flavour is already immense and richly textured - very much ’Supermassive’ in its output. And you then have an impressively powerful tone stack essentially - consisting of an expansive Filter [Warp] (350Hz > 5kHz) used in tandem with a wide-ranging ’Q’ bandwidth control [Dimension]. So essentially a sort of semi-parametric EQ - where you set your chosen ...

So this FrankenSTEEN Fuzz makes use of the Effects Layouts Chaos Bolt PCB which they in turn describe as a ’Noisemaker of a Muff’ which describes it very neatly. It’s a somewhat full-on Muff style of a fuzz - getting maximum mileage out of 7 smart controls and dual footswitches.

Controls - Volume, Tone, Gain, Feedback Tune (Red), Tone Switch : Bypass / On, Green LED Switch : On/Off, Input Gain Time, Left Feedback Footswitch, Right Bypass Footswitch.

Ports - TS In, 9V DC [-] 10mA, TS Out...

SHOKR Pedals is Newbridge, Ireland native Dan O’Shaugnessy - who has previous form with his earlier A-51 EFX brand - which consisted of pedals like the Uranus Boost, Plasmodial Slime Bass Overdrive, and Warped Worm Distortion.

He felt he had kind of boxed himself in a little with the A-51 EFX Brand, and wanted to pivot in a different fresher, and more modern direction. So it made sense to launch a new brand - SHOKR Pedals - for which the KRUSH Fuzz-Verb is its launch pedal.

What you ...