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 ...

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 ...

August was quite a slow month in many ways - particularly for those of us clinging to the last vestiges of hope towards the arrival of a Buffalo FX Reticon Flanger. That now seems a very distant pipe-dream indeed as reports indicate that Steve Painter is suffering from some horribly debilitating condition that prevents him from doing any physical activities for the foreseeable future. He’s not officially responded to any communiqués since June 30th - the last day many of us heard ...

I frequently get asked to recommend a great all-rounder every*man kind of fuzz pedal, and over the years as my own collection as grown - so has the roster of usual suspects in my recommendations, I felt that it was about time to have the definitive list up on this site so I could simply refer people to that.

There’s still quite a few more outliers here - and for reasons of symmetry I judiciously decided to omit them from inclusion on this occasion - but there are certainly a few ...

It seems very timely that not long after I’ve finally landed my targeted Danelectro 3699 Fuzz - two further examples appear almost at the exact same time - Stomp Under Foot’s medium-BB-size Silver Fox and the full-size exact Foxy Tone Box replica from studio gear specialists Warm Audio.

In this instance you pay for feature-set and modernity really as the smallest box is the dearest at $199, while Warm Audio’s near original version with NOS parts is going for a very ...

It brings me great pleasure to be able to showcase more of the great work of my good friend Sof from Expresso FX - whom I frequently refer to as the ’Transistor Charmer / Whisperer’. Sof was one of my first significant pedal builder contacts - and it seems fitting that I’m featuring him again - almost exactly a year on from my first full overview of his Expresso FX Range.

I had acquired and lived long-term with 4 of Sof’s pedals before I felt I was sufficiently ...

July has largely been a very decent month for me and culminated with the arrival of my twin new Expresso FX Dual Custom Fuzzes and my annual white whale as such - the Chase Bliss Audio Automatone Preamp MKII on this occasion.

It looks like 4 pedals failed to get over the line within the appointed time period - the longest-ranging of which is my Evil Pumpkin Modded DS-1 - which has been en-route from Kiev since June 12th and which I surely hoped should have landed by now.

My ...

I was a little late to Matt Pasquerella’s Stomp Under Foot (SUF) superior range of mostly Big Muff Style Compact Enclosure Fuzz Replicas. Besides the original - Electro-Harmonix’ Mike Matthews, I consider Matt to be one of a quartet of the leading proponents of the Muff sound - alongside Marc Ahlfs of Skreddy Pedals, Matthew Holl of Wren and Cuff, and Mike Vickery of Vick Audio.

The first SUF pedal I properly encountered was the Dirt Preacher - courtesy of a Nick Jaffe demo...