This article has been a long time coming - where I originally started this ahead of the Mini Edition - which went live on January 24th. I was waiting for a couple of new pedals to be released - while the article has been iterated around 20 times now with a number of recent additions.
And the pedal I was waiting to launch still hasn’t quite happened, while the builder has authorised me to tease it in advance of its official release. And if I were to do the same exercise tomorrow - no doubt ...
So a follower on Instagram asked me to do a piece on which pedals had Sweepable mids - meaning really semi-parametric mids - with one control for Mids Frequency, and another to Cut/Boost that Frequency.
I thought there were a lot more than those that I finally uncovered. It’s mostly distortion pedals that have 3-Band EQs, and so it stands to reason - that it’s mostly distortion pedals that have parametric mids too.
While there is also a now long discontinued series - by Big Tone Music ...
Readers of this blog will know that I’ve long and consistently had 2 key pedal types in my pedal-chain - namely a Brian May Vox style pedal, and an Eddie Van Halen Marshall Plexi style pedal - which for the last number of years have populated slots #17 and #18.
My very first pairing was the hybrid set of Bearfoot FX EGDM and MI Effects Super Crunch Box V2 - which overall probably served the longest innings on those two slots.
Since that first pairing we’ve had matched brand pairs - from...
It’s been a while since I last did a Vox-in-a-box roundup - in fact all the way back to my 2018 12 of the Best Vox Style Pedals feature - so it was about time I did an update. Readers will know that I always have a Vox pedal in my pedal-chain - occupying what is now slot #17.
It started with the Catalinbread Galileo way back when - and then following this rough sequence :
So it’s about time for another round of ’12 Degrees of Saturation’ - featuring an updated selection and including most of the more recently released notable Mini Gain Pedals. Please note that as before - this is something of a Grey Science with simply approximated best fit positioning - as all those pedals have slightly different gain ranges, and certain ones within each selection / category can have vastly more extended range than others - and often cover more than one of the categories.
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I thought it would be a decent exercise to gather up, contrast and compare my thoughts on my 5 Multi-Bender pedals to-date - all of which have been reviewed individually in the last 6 months or so.
There’s an interesting mix of approaches here - some more deliberate and scientific, while others a touch more serendipitous. All the key Tone Bender circuits consisted of Germanium Transistor types, while there has been a recent trend to replicate those as closely as possible with Silicon ...
So I last did one of these back in 2020 - meaning that these ’Best of Overdrive’ run-downs seem to be a circa biennial affair. We’ve upped the numbers to 32 this year, while they represent barely a quarter of the overdrives I have in my reference collection - so there are obviously a lot of honourable mentions listed below - before the Final Thoughts section.
These types of exercises are incredibly tricky to strike the right balance of generally considered classic overdrive pedals and ...
I had been meaning to do this exercise for quite some time - and have had a number of readers chasing me up about it - since my last Dumble Style Pedal overview was way back in February of 2019, and where I listed my then 9 favourite candidates - including three that I owned. This time around I’ve thrown 18 hats into the ring or twice as many as the last roundup.
The delay occurred in part because I was waiting for my friend Brian Mena to officially launch his V2 Dumbstruck pedal - which ...
I’ve mentioned a few times before on this site - the unique confection / merging of Fuzz Face and Tone Bender voicings in a single pedal - as exemplified by D*A*M’s Drag ’n’ Fly and Graveyard Tramp which both deploy hybrid GE+SI Transistors, I’ve also cited the 5-Transistor Boss FZ-3 as a decent candidate for that same category. While the featured Menatone Law Bender GE here really goes a step further in its overall versatility.
At its core the Law Bender ...
Readers will know that I’m a big fan of Brian Mena’s output, and own several of his flagship pedals. Early this year I identified a number of his Mini Pedals that I would really like to add to the collection. I had in mind then the formidable trio of Hindenburg Distortion (Supro Thunderbolt), Simplexity Germanium Harmonic Preamp, and The Thundering Revival Red Snapper -derived Hight Gain Distortion.
As is often my way I like to do these sorts of range overviews to really firm up and ...