June hasn’t been a particularly kind month to me - in fact it’s been something of a difficult period - I was going to call this piece ’The Darkness Lingers’ but didn’t really want that particular NLP on this blog - which I try to keep as positive as is practically possible.

A number of ventures and collaborations I was working on this month came a cropper when the other collaborating parties somewhat inexplicably and suddenly ended their involvement - ...

Readers of this blog should be well aware by now of Skindred’s Lead Guitarist and Redbeard Effects Head Honcho Mikey Demus. And while I had been very familiar with his band Skindred for a number of years - my focus didn’t shift fully to Mikey himself until he got into partnership with Adrian Thorpe and started producing his own range of signature pedals.

The first release was an exceptional take on Mikey’s core signature Orange Rockerverb 100 Amp sound - the Red Mist ...

May was the month that several things finally slotted into place - all my missing / presumed lost USA orders finally landed as did a few other pedals which had been somewhat lingering in the wild - so May delivered a pretty decent pedal yield overall in the end. I also got to be involved in a couple of exciting up-and-coming brands - Kuro Custom Audio of Italy and MidValleyFX of USA. I’ve already published a feature on the excellent Kuro Akuma Fiery Fuzz as featured on slot #5, and hope ...

I don’t typically feature coverage of simply 2nd iteration limited edition artwork or colourway pedals - unless there is some sort of significant underlying change. While on this occasion I would kind of like to raise the issue of ’First Mover Disadvantage’!

By which I mean getting in on the first round release of a pedal - where soon after you acquire one - you kind of regret not holding out slightly longer - as an even better version materialises later on. This ...

Several people predicted that following on from the pricey $400 hand-wired 1966 Range - which I wasn’t entirely complementary about - that Josh Scott would release more mainstream SMD style devices covering the same sort of territory. In the launch video (per Final Thoughts below) Josh mentioned that there would likely be 10 pedals in this new series - with the above 4 being the first available. I expect the Legends of Fuzz Series to overlap very significantly with the 1966 Range ...

As far as I’m concerned this has been somewhat a long time coming and I’ve mentioned it a number of times previously. While the Whoctahell Sub-Octave Fuzz has had dual footswitches from the start - the Octahive Upper Octave Fuzz has always relied on a side toggle-switch until now.

I am generally a fan of Beetronics pedals and have 3 of theirs to-date - the Royal Jelly, Swarm, and the lower-right Octahive ArrowMint Edition pictured above. It always niggled me that the ...

It turns out that I’m quite the fan of Zach Broyles and his many circuit confections. And despite having only been officially properly in business for a handful of years now, Zach’s output is really rather prolific and a number of his classic circuits are already discontinued. Most of you will know his story of how he started dabbling with pedals while working at celebrated guitar hangout Carter Vintage. He got to a stage where he had established enough contacts with clients and ...

This post was triggered by the eventuality that my long-serving Emerald Green Distortion Machine - my Boosted Vox style pedal of choice - will soon be yielding its sport for a while to the incoming new Menatone Vertical Top-Boost-in-a-Can.

I’ve always had a soft spot for Bearfoot FX pedals and was somewhat ignorantly collection Bearfoot, Mad Professor and OneControl pedals before being aware of the Björn Juhl BJFE connection. It has to be said that Björn is one of the ...

So a lot has changed during the month of April - we’ve had some thoroughly exciting and invigorating new product launches, while three of my American acquisitions are seemingly lost by USPS - hopefully they will materialise some day, but for one of them there have been no tracking updates for over a month now - which is somewhat alarming. As the eternal optimist, I can only hope that things right themselves eventually. I had already determined that my pedal-acquisition would go on semi-...

I was trying to figure out how best to cover the new Wren and Cuff J Mascis Garbage Face Fuzz with Germanium Treble Boost, when along came the equally cartoonish graphic’d KHDK Unicorn Blood II - another Dark Matter Coffee Octave Fuzz collaboration.

In fact only the general aesthetic approach here is the same - similar form-factor and similar number of controls, but the internals being quite different. The KHDK one is a Dark, Fat, Octave Fuzz, capable of some really sludgy tones,...