May has been a little bit of strange month - lots of delays really, and waiting for pedals to land.

As inevitably happens most months - much was delayed this month, and I was unable to complete some of the larger articles - they will need to wait until next month, there’s certainly lots of projects in progress. Where new and imminent arrivals kind of scuppered several intended projects - hopefully they can be completed in June.

The first event I’m attending this month is tomorrow - as a micropub ...

It seems quite timely that I just recently covered off the Caroline Parabola Pawnshop Tremolo - with its lush, warm-sounding higher gain preamp. Apparently the very same preamp that’s also in the Caroline Météore Lo-Fi Reverb. Caroline Guitar wisely decided to give this excellent preamp a solo outing!

So this new overdrive pedal further celebrates and honours Aaron Graves, who has long been associated with the brand. We get quite a beautifully warm and granular overdrive here with 2 x gain ...

I first covered ThunderTomate back in 2019 - when I did my ’Best of Spanish Guitar Pedals’ feature - and where ThunderTomate was seemingly in short supply by then - about to go on hiatus presumably. I particularly liked the look of the Dani Gomez / AC30 Custom which I featured in that article. But never came across one that was available for sale. A few ThunderTomate pedals landed on Reverb.com sporadically in and around 2019 - but not really the ones I was the keenest on, and then all of a ...

One of my favourite super-versatile overdrives get a new edition / makeover - to bring it up to date with the latest design phase of Colortone Pedals. The Parasite gets its name from the definition of its unique JFETs - which are described as ’... sizzling with parasitic feedback’.

4 JFETs make up the core soundstage - which is further served by wide ranging Active Post-Drive Low and High EQ’s, as well as the super smart Pre-Drive Bright Boost and Bass Boost stitches - where the latter is ...

The Kudu is a really cool circuit developed by Dan Coggins as a smart multi-clipping tone-enhancer - created to make everything it touches sound better. Thorpy and Dan have run the pedal into a vast array of pedals and amps - and the pedal never fails to improve the texture and tonality of the device that it pushes.

There’s no less than 12 Diodes onboard - while 6 of those are for power management. Which leaves 2 x 2N4148 Silicon Diodes for Soft Clipping, 2 x Red LED’s for Hard Clipping, ...

I really rate both the Empress Germ Drive and Multidrive pedals, and have had both Heavy and Heavy Menace pedals from the start. According to the Empress Drive introduction the development path for this new Drive pedal started with patching a Germ Drive into the middle of a Heavy Menace circuit!

Furthermore, on first glance - there seem to be some parallels to the ParaEQ II too, and indeed Zak tells me that the ParaEQ was an inspiration also - and was in fact used to help set the core ...

A slightly uneventful month in many ways - just the one event - the excellent sophomore Leeds Pedal Show - where I ended up picking up 3 pedals.

Some killer releases during the month, with a strong final flurry to make up the 10 notable article highlights. I’ve been very busy all month - and plenty of work has gone into this as usual, while there was somehow fewer large-scale rundowns and marquee features - more of that next month for sure.

HIGHLIGHTS for APRIL :

[Click on Images for ...

I was all et to get the Big Talker Modulator next in my ongoing coverage of the complete Empty Head Effects roster - but Nick tweaked his The Lover 2-Stage Transistor Drive & Fuzz - which was initially in Zvex-style Landscape format, while nearly everyone positioned the pedal vertically in Portrait mode on their boards. So Nic decided in the end that he should relocate the jacks to the top edge and shift some of those elements around for a more elegant control topology the the more pedalboard-...

I own quite a few Top-Boosted AC30 style pedals, while this one is a little more expansive than most - combining a full fat Top Boosted AC30 type with a proper RangeMaster - all in the same box.

I would have preferred this in portrait format, but I can’t really grumble - as this has a perfect feature set - which wholly justifies that format. It has exactly the right complement of controls to get maximum impact out of this combination - and achieve the full range of those Gallagher and May ...