GPX Blog

My first exposure to Thorpy - way back when, was the then monikered Muffroom Cloud Fuzz - a fantastic sounding and really versatile take on the original Triangle version EXH Big Muff Pi. At the time though I was slightly put off by the somewhat over-sized enclosure - which was both significantly longer and wider than my preferred compact enclosure size - so I campaigned hard to have Thorpy bring the box down in size somewhat. This did not look like it was going to happen - and I eventually ...

I’m a touch late to the party with this feature - as it’s been quite a while since Zvex announced and sold out of the very first Fuzz Factory edition of this new limited-run line of pedals. They are pretty much identical in content, components and format to the original classic horizontal compact pedals - bar for the use of fully transparent / see-through Lexan enclosures. Lexan is actually a super hard plastic compound or version of Polycarbonate - a thermoplastic polymer - often ...

This is the second of likely 3 features inspired by my ’Pedal Primary Colour Wheel article’. I already covered off the colour ’Red’, and now we’re onto a fairly obvious category wholly dominated by the MXR Phase 90, its adherents, evolutions and derivations.

I own only a single on of the 9 featured here - the Alexander La Calavera, while I also possess a sort of mini version of the MXR Phase 99 AKA the Phase 95. My own favourite phaser is still the Chase ...

I will start by reiterating once more how big a fan I am of Swedish circuit designer Björn Juhl / BJFE and his many associated brands - which use variations of his celebrated circuits - Mad Professor in Finland, Bearfoot FX in the USA and OneControl in Japan. I have several varieties from each of those brands - 15 or so all told, but my first connection with Björn was via Mad Professor.

Ironically the very first Mad Professor pedal I acquired was not derived from Björn ...

This post is inspired by the recent launches of the Hotone Omni AC and Mooer Tone Capture Pedals. Before that, the long-standing champions of Acoustic Simulation were the Boss AC-3 and smaller Mooer replica - the Acoustikar. While SIM1’s slightly pricey XT-1 is a sort of more elaborate version of Tone Capture - coming with several high quality presets onboard by default.

Each of these pedals does things slightly differently - although there are degrees of overlap for some of ...

Update! This feature inspired 5 further articles - Red, Orange, Yellow, Green and Blue!

This feature was inspired by a couple of different events - firstly ongoing conversations I have been having with Fjord Fuzz’s Daniel Thornhill about the colour of LEDs for different pedal types, and secondly an odd Q&A episode of That Pedal Show where Dan was trying to match a pedal to the colour of his yellow trousers or pants as some of you like to call them.

I turned my mind ...

This article was inspired by the recent launch of the Caroline Guitar Co. Somersault Lo-fi Modulator which is really a sort of Chorus - which all these others are indeed near enough all too at least to a degree. In fact Josh Scott of JHS fame kind of beat me to the punch on this with his last Thursday’s YouTube video - which I share in Final Thoughts below. Yet I had already drawn up my own shortlist of 9 in advance of that and Josh and I only overlap on 4 - the Somersault obviously, ...

With very little fanfare Electro-Harmonix has launched the 3rd of its Nano Multi-Effects Workstations - following the extremely well received Canyon Delay & Looper, and the Oceans 11 Reverb. I have featured the Canyon and Oceans several times on this site, while I’ve often bemoaned the lack of a full featured compact multi-modulation pedal.

I personally have always favoured multi-effects units at the tail end of my own pedal-chain - obviously the larger workstations. I ...

I have covered off a number of my favourite Summer NAMM pedals already - including the Boss 200 range, RC-10R and SY-1, the Fulltone OCD Ge, the REVV G2, the Spaceman Effects Gemini IV, and Walrus Audio Kangra for instance. And there’s a couple more surprise ones I will be posting as dedicated features very soon - so stay alert for those! In the wake of one of the best ever Winter NAMM’s it was clear that the Summer NAMM could never match that degree of innovation - in fact most of ...

I’ve actually been meaning to do this post for a while now - I’ve had several requests over the years to do a ’best of’ feature for Catalinbread - with some even wanting one specifically on delays - which actually only number 6 and therefore don’t quite merit a solo outing - although we’ll see. So this at last is that post - taking in the best of new and established, innovative and unique - across the 4 sub-categories - Foundation Overdrives | Delays and ...