I really liked what I heard from the demos of this pedal. Which is another one of those sort of fuzzes for people that don’t like fuzzes. A lot of the heavy lifting / shaping here is down to the use of Germanium Clipping Diodes.

We have a silky Vintage Voice 1, and a slightly sharper / more aggressive Modern Voice 2.

Controls - Level, Attack (Fuzz Intensity), Vintage Voice 1 / Modern Voice 2, Tone 1 for Voice 1, Tone 2 for Voice 2.

I ended up mostly at 2 o’clock on every dial, while...

The Peace Fuzz was one of my targets for last year, and I indeed did an article back in August of last year with the aim to get one in during that year. I used to have a main contact at MLA - called Mark - who just stopped responding to me all of a sudden. I had helped him connect with a number of my good demo friends - including Andy Martin, Shawn Tubbs, and Alberto Barrero - I had set all those up - but Mark did not follow up for whatever reason. And shortly after that kind of started ...

So I’ve kind of lost touch with Missing Link Audio over the years. I used to have a pretty solid relationship and reliable contact that just became less and less responsive - to a point where I was just being actively ghosted.

I had helped said imprint source quality demos - connecting them to some of my great Demo Friends - including Andy Martin and Shawn Tubbs - I did the introductions and handovers, and my MLA contact then seemingly proceeded to burn bridges - which made be look bad too....

Obviously the big Distortion story of the year for me was my recent Full Metal Racket High Gain Distortion roundup - and roughly one third of this selection was in service of that feature alone. Even then I didn’t get to everything I wanted to as a couple or so builders weren’t particularly responsive. This is often quite a thankless task of revolving and closing doors - in any case case I’m proud of what I managed to accomplish regardless - and some of the candidates are quite superb.

The ...

So it’s that time of year again when I trawl through the releases over these past 12 months or so and endeavour to extract the pedal highlights of the year. This exercise is all about drawing a line in the sand and figuring out which pedals deserve to be on the notable side of the line.

Of course everything I publish on Guitar Pedal X is highly curated - those are my own particular preferences and choices, and those are the pedals that I like the look of. So everything that appears on ...

This article has been a long time coming - I’ve teased it a few times now - but there was always one or two pedals missing from the list - and in fact new varieties and iterations inbound! I have all of these in the reference collection now bar the Analog Alien Bucket Seat Overdrive and the super rare Keeley Bootlegger Overdrive - which was a Sweetwater Limited Germanium Run of the Red Dirt - back in 2016.

I probably won’t be getting the Bucket Seat as I don’t really see the point in that ...

Missing Link Audio (MLA) are really picking up a reputation for nailing these properly simple but smart 3-knob signature style pedals - covering off some classic Duane Allman and Billy Gibbons tones recently. And now taking on the giants of Australian Rock!

Anyone who knows anything about classic rock is very familiar with those beautifully textured cranked Marshall Plexi tones via Angus’s Gibson SG and Malcolm’s single pickup Gretsch Jet Firebird. They are the epitome of benchmark lead and...

It’s been a while since I announced the launch of the Billy Gibbons style Eliminator Overdrive - in fact all the way back on May 11th. And a lot has happened in the interim - where the very original version, pictured below, had the car’s headlights off in its artwork illustration / graphic, while subsequent iterations now incorporate high beams - as in the above recent limited run black edition. I personally would have placed LEDs for headlights (like on the Triungulo Lab Scar Fuzz) and raised ...

Pedals are very much like buses at times - when you get a number of certain types appearing at around the same time. We all know that pedal / circuit creation cycles can often take a year or two to develop - so it’s typically entirely serendipitous when two relatively similar pedals appear almost simultaneously - as is the case with the very recent J Rockett El Hombre, and this MLA Eliminator Overdrive.

Both are firmly aimed at recreating Billy Gibbons’ iconic and legendary ZZ Top Tones - ...