The catalyst to this post is of course the brand new 3-Germanium Transistor Queen Bee Fuzz - which Mike has recently launched via his Custom Shop. I was really just waiting for its price to materialise before sharing this ’best of’ roundup.

Despite Mike’s idiosyncrasies and several dubious outbursts as such I’ve regardless always admired his circuit-designs and his overall highly consistent quality of work. In fact I own 8 of his pedals to date - while only 3 in...

October has proven to be another fairly significant month - both in terms of new pedal releases / arrivals and my own pedal-chain evolution. I’m also in the midst of a Vick Audio phase - having relatively recently acquired most of the key pedals in that range - including all 5 Tau Series Muff variants - which were all in my chain together for a big chunk of October.

There were a number of very significant releases/arrivals this month for me - including the Boss GT-1000 CORE and ...

Spaceman Launch Day is always a mix of excitement and trepidation. But truly I’ve been less afflicted since Zak started producing more readily available Standard production variants. I wasn’t aware until I saw the head-to-head of the Sputnik III insides as to what degree the Standard and Limited editions varied. Obviously the differences are somewhat significantly more than than the knobs and enclosure treatment - and in fact the Standard varieties tend to have more of the tiny SMT ...

This time we’re looking at the Arcades’ REVERSE Card - which covers a series of intricate Reverse Delays - with additional controls variously for Pitch, Speed, Direction, Octaves, Modulation and other signal manipulations. As before, the majority of these are very straightforward and straight-laced even in that sense even though somewhat unique in makeup, while others can be a little more quirky.

When I think of Reverse Delays, my immediate reference point is Danelectro&...

Key to Eddie’s signature sound has always been his use of Chorus, Flanger and Phaser effects in particular, along with some Wah-based flourishes. As a result MXR has built up a small range of EVH branded pedals - which Eddie mostly used on his latter-day pedalboards - with some occasional exceptions.

For this particular exercise I’m referencing one of Eddie’s 2012 pedalboards - as per the visual below - which also features a Boss OC-3 Super Octave, and an MXR Analog ...

I’m no stranger to Coppersound Pedals or Jack White’s Third Man Records imprint and in fact have one of Jack’s earlier limited edition collaborations in the guise of a Yellow colourway Gamechanger Audio Plasma Coil pedal. The Coppersound collaboration marks the fourth occasion Jack has engaged in such a project - the first first was the Union Tube and Transistor Bumble Buzz Fuzz (sort of Super Fuzz), next came the Mantic Flex PLL pedal collaboration, then Gamechanger obviously...

I’ll jump straight to the obvious here in calling this Boss’s contender to go against current category leader and long-term reigning champ - the Line 6 Helix HX STOMP Multi Effects Processor and Amp Modeller - which interestingly retails for $599 in the USA, but only around £399 on this side of the pond. While starting RRP tag for the GT-1000 CORE will be £615 (vs GT-1000 currently retailing at £799UK/$999USA). In fact prices are weirdly quite disparate between UK,...

And so as my 7th month of isolation draws to a close - the frequency of new product releases has begun to accelerate again after the lull of summer. The month started on fine form with the slightly surprising snap arrival of he new Jackson Audio El Guapo, next we had the Walrus Audio Julia that always should have been - in the guise of the new and improved Julianna Chorus, then the Zander Circuitry Compact Siclone, Boss OC-5 Octave, somewhat delayed Big Ear Albie, the EHX Pitch Fork+, Red Witch...

Electro-Harmonix originally introduced the Pitch Fork+ at this year’s one and only NAMM back at the start of the year - alongside the 1440 Stereo Looper and Oceans 12 Dual-Channel Reverb Workstation - the latter of which I have. Like many other builders EHX has been impacted by delays in manufacturing, but as I’ve mentioned on this blog several times recently - delayed production can be a real boon to the end-consumer - as the extended production cycle allows for more refinement and...

In some ways you could say that the side-effect of the current pandemic has actually been helpful to Boss on this occasion as it has allowed its engineers to spend more time honing the accuracy of its tracking algorithm, and perfecting the authentic replication of the slightly warmer analog Vintage Monophonic Mode of the original OC-2. As factory production slowed right down, engineers had a little more leeway to further refine and calibrate all those controls and functions to the very best ...