GPX Blog

You should know by now that I’m a big fan of DanDrive Pedal - per my September 2019 overview of the brand. And of course I dearly love my Austin Pride (Germanium/Silicon Switching Texas Square Face Fuzz) and Secret Weapon (Zonk Fuzz) pedals from that overview.

To be honest I was a tad miffed when Dan introduced a third John Hornby Skewes Zonk variant - as I had only just recently then acquired the Secret Weapon edition. Dan’s original take on the JHS Zonk was the Germanium ...

Of course everyone needs at least one Germanium Fuzz Face style fuzz - as a full-on fuzz fan I have several - yet there is usually room for 1 more! On this occasion Mad Professor have gone with a modern circuit which does not require the traditional centre-positive power supply, and they have done something to remove the need for biasing - likely through their choice of Germanium Transistors - which is annoyingly not referenced.

I don’t really mind paying a decent amount for ...

A couple of provisos right from the start here - this is obviously not a definitive selection per se - it’s grounded to my own preferences - and secondly, as I’ve noted several times before - I’ve come rather late to EarthQuaker Devices and don’t have as many of those pedals in the collection as I probably should. I’ve mentioned on numerous occasions about the idiosyncrasies of how we are exposed to different gear. What each player is into is the result of quite ...

I originally got into SolidGoldFX (SGFX) pedals way back when I was researching Octave Fuzz pedals, and the SGFX 76 Fuzz (Hybrid Germanium/Silicon Super Fuzz) came out as my sort of surprise favourite in that selection. I did not particularly like the original banana yellow colourway and so went for the Custom Shop Weathered Rust edition instead - as pictured.

The next one that piqued my interest was the Copper Edition Germanium version of the Rosie Fuzz (Tone Bender MKIII), and then a...

I’ve long mentioned that we’re living through the second golden age of effects pedals (some say ’Diamond Age’’), and as good as things have been - 2019 took it all to an entirely new level of excellence. I don’t recall any previous year where we’ve had quite the same degree of innovation and so many ingeniously appealing pedals - this year has been so fast and furious - it’s been difficult to keep up at times.

I noted in my End of Year ...

I’m possibly writing this just a touch prematurely as at the point of writing - one of the pictured pedals hasn’t turned up quite yet, and it will be touch and go if gets released out of customs before the end of the year. That pedal being Sinvertek’s new N5+ Drive - featuring no less than 7 beautifully milled aluminium knobs along with 5 toggle-switches - and all within a compact enclosure format - but more of that later.

This year has mostly sort of gone to plan - ...

For many players the BC183/2L loaded Chase Tone ’68 Red Velvet Fuzz was/is the perfect warm 60’s ’Germanium’ style voicing Fuzz Face type of Fuzz - with all the flavour and none of the downsides of Germanium! It kind of follows through from the lineage of the former Roadster Fuzz - which I also have - as well as the also discontinued Blue Stardust Fuzz.

The control topology of the Fuzz Fella is that same 5-knob layout that we’re familiar with from the Red ...

My own story with Sitek pedals can be traced back to a fortuitous YouTube demo by Joss Allen (April this year) of the then pretty brand spanking new Pandora Fuzz. Everyone knows I’m a huge fuzz fan by now - and I really liked what I heard and what I saw - pretty much within the first couple of minutes of playback - I was straight onto Reverb.com where Sitek has a store - and the pedal was with me within a matter of days. The Pandora being Andrzej ’Andy’ Sitek’s evolved ...

When I started this roundup a few years ago, there were only 9 pedals in my selection, while this latest edition has 28 - which will likely be the maximum number I display here - I will just ongoingly swap in newer and more interesting pedals as and when I come across them - for future roundups.

I’ve long since singled out Fuzz Pedals as being particularly suitable for the mini format - and in fact my first long-term pedal-chain fuzz was the still excellent EWS Little Fuzzy Drive...

Near the start of this week we saw several leading pedal builder brands go all mysterious on us posting an encircled (B) logo ident accompanied by the hashtag #BLACKEDXOUT on various social media. Many thought this to mean some sort of limited or black edition pedals for the Black Friday ’sales’, while I wrongly guessed it implied a Black Friday Sales boycott.

This afternoon all was revealed when 17 Brands together released all-black stealth-like enclosures for one or a few...