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 ...
I’ve known Holy Island Audio since the fabulous Stourbridge FX Expo back in 2022. And I’ve encountered Gwion a good 20 times throughout the intervening years - but somewhat embarrassingly still hadn’t landed some of those fantastic full-on sounding pedals.
It seemed that whenever I encountered Gwion at a show - he never had any stock of the very pedal I was after at the time. As for most small brands - Gwion operates on a Small Batch methodology - but more from an order-window perspective -...
As introduced at the recent Leeds Pedal Show - Northern Stompboxes alone has the really attractive Limited White Colourway Edition of the Fuzz Fields Modulated Fuzz and the IT.. LFO Modulator.
I own and love my original Fuzz Fields Black Set, but would be heavily conflicted if I didn’t already own one of these - I would likely have a preference for the White Set if starting from scratch, but I don’t feel it enough to want to change my unit - I’ve already bonded with it! - and everything ...
This goes back to a demo that my good friend Pedal Experiments’ Phil did back in October of 2024 (2nd one below) - of the smallsound/BigSound Blarg o-tron o-tron.
He was in contact with Lucas from Rockwright around about the same time - they got to discussing the circuit, and decided to collaborate on an evolved compact edition of that circuit - which is what became the Phuzzmaphobia.
They weren’t the first to evolve the Blarg o-tron o-tron as the now alas defunct Dominican Republic’s ...
For me - these Dealer special White Light editions - are some of the prettiest varieties Spaceman has released to-date - with the white-out / snow-blind livery and striking cyan / teal LED’s - just gorgeous. I was missing the Atlas IV and Apollo VIIb - and Cream City Music and Axe and You Shall Receive were enormously helpful in getting those shipped to me in short order. I then spotted that my friend Scott at Axe and You Shall Receive also had a White Light Rumblefuzz II remaining - and I just...
I’ve been on friendly terms with Oleg from Russia’s Shift Line electronics for a number of years now - mostly on account of his killer original Termofuzz - first released in 2011. I’ve championed that super versatile fuzz for years, and long advocated for a reissue - which finally happened around the middle of last year. Obviously there is understandably no way to get products out of Russia to the UK these days - I’ve no idea how the Australian I bought this off managed to get one - possibly ...
I own a number of PLL types - the slightly synthy harmonizing fuzz - and CopperSound has miniaturised that brilliantly. My favourite PLL’s are the Tark Audio Squidink, and the Beetronics Swarm - which are much simplified from the original Schumann PLL.
And this Ion is a simpler version still. Just one Fuzz (intensity) knob, and then a 3-way Mode / Frequency Selector :
This project has been a long time in the making - I actually started off this compilation properly last autumn, and then have iterated the final selection a number of times since then - before reaching this final format. I apologise to anyone whom I’ve inadvertently left out - I still have a number of Octave Fuzzes to require - that task is never ending!
I own around 80 octave fuzzes so far - and this is near enough half of those - where I’ve mostly leant into compact editions - and ...
Probably the strongest selection of the year - each one of these is amazing and sounds killer. But then agin similar was true of the Overdrives. I’m very much a fuzz fanatic - so his selection has to take the edge - what a selection!
This selection includes 3 from EarthQuaker Devices, 2 from Drunk Beaver, 2 from Fjord Fuzz, and 2 from ThorpyFX.
It also includes the likely pedal of the year - within a selection of 10 award winners here - these are so good - I could have labelled even ...
My close association with Thorpy started back in late September of 2018 - at the now defunct Olympia UK Guitar Show. He was the first pedal maker I reached out to, and the first I connected with.
Since then ThorpyFX Pedals have become my 3rd most populous selection after Boss and Drunk Beaver. Those 3 brands alone contribute over 200 pedals to my reference collection!
The fact that I’m now at 31 ThorpyFX Pedals is a major milestone - and features every mainline MKII pedal Thorpy has made. ...