Those more sharp-eyed among you will have noted that I’m currently engaged in exploring the Pettyjohn Electronics range - sort of one or two pedals at a time. And this would seem to be a good point within those proceedings to share some of my findings thus far.

As I’ve relayed elsewhere, I was initially highly confused by Stephen Pettyjohn’s output in that all the Foundry Series pedals were offered with a number of ’Upgrades’. Making it seem to me that the...

April has been another pretty formidable month - and at last I have the CopperSound Triplegraph in my hands - which presented some challenges in being accommodated within the rig. I’ve had to significantly adjust and rejig various elements and areas - including of course the format of the above reference visual.

This indicates the physical position of the Triplegraph at position #14 in terms of physical pedal placement - where it sits just before the CBA Automatone Preamp, while ...

I’m proud to declare that I own each of Alex Millar’s recent 6 Compact Edition Guitar Pedals - including of course the trio that was released last week. In that same shipment I received a plain version of the Siclone Silicon Chaos Initiator Fuzz - to which I myself applied the labels. You may recall from my ’Maverick Inflection’ article that I noted that I had some OCD issues with the splodgy nature of the graphics - to which ends Alex offered to do me a plain version - ...

With the fairly imminent arrival of the 3,000 limited-run edition Boss TB-2W Germanium Tone Bender MKII, I thought it opportune to do a brief potted history of Boss’s compact fuzz pedals. Note that according to latest updates, the wholly sold out TB-2W pedals will not be going out until late May now. This is a little later than the Late April/Early May date range that was the originally advertised. Each of those pedals requires separate hand-calibration and setup with extensive testing ...

I would like to start by apologising to those builders who didn’t get a pedal featured in Wednesday’s final 32 Key Guitar Effects Pedal Types article. Know that I hold you all in the highest of esteem - and that said overview is/was simply a somewhat temporary and fleeting snapshot of my current preferences on that day - with a particular emphasis towards versatility and variety delivered by a single pedal. So some pedals are typically more narrowly focused and specialist, while ...

It was only natural that the Compact Format Preferred Versions feature should follow the Mini examples. Again largely inspired by the recent ’12 Degrees’ projects.

Once more I’ve had a change of mind on some of the candidates and the preferred examples are slightly different to those previous references. Obviously new pedals have arisen, and priorities and preferences can shift fairly regularly based on prevailing mood.

That said, most of these are long-term...

After a couple of complex pedal reviews - it’s nice to get back to basics with another new fuzz confection. Like most of my favourite fuzzes - this EHX Ripped Speaker Fuzz features an external Bias knob - which controls the timbre and texture of those ripping fuzz sounds.

This goes everywhere from a sort of farty / brassy sounding fuzz, to a smooth gating voicing, and onto more jagged cut-up stuttery/sputtery sounds. It does the voltage starve / dying battery thing really well, ...

This article has been much requested - following on from my similar takes on the 7 Key Big Muff varieties and 9 Key Tone Bender varieties. I’ve sort of covered this a little bit before courtesy of my 6 Potent Fuzz Face Pairings feature and also my piece on Key Fuzz Transistors, while this offers a more comprehensive and expansive overview.

Everyone knows the story about how Ivor Arbiter of Sound City / Drum City fame sort of adapted the MKI.V Tone Bender format into a mic-stand-...

It is with a heavy heart I report that this will be the last Jackson Audio feature I include on this site. I had intended doing a full in-depth review of the unit and all 6 Plugin Modules. And in pursuit of such I tried to request some degree of accommodation / discount to help make this happen. After all $480 / £480 all in is a very significant outlay, and Guitar Pedal X is entirely self-funded. It’s quite normal in this industry to engage in a fair and equitable value exchange - ...

My first encounter with Markus’s Reeves Electro Pedals was courtesy of Brian Wampler’s Instagram repost on May 4th last year. This is a great example of serendipity where legions of fuzz fans were introduced to something genuinely new and innovative by a leading taste-maker.

Brian’s Insta-share was of the immaculate point-to-point interior wiring of a 2N2FACE Fuzz - Markus’s take on the Silicon Fuzz Face - utilising 2n2222a Transistors. This is a rare occasion ...