As has been variously covered on this site - I have a rather extensive reference collection of pedals - amounting to somewhere north of 1,300 currently - and where well over half, or 700+ of those are fuzz variants - including more than 110 Big Muff types, more than 100 Fuzz Faces, and somewhere over 50 Tone Bender variants.

I often enjoy the symmetry of specific pedal pairs - and have a number of those in the collection - where this feature is one such subset - really just the most obvious...

A reader asked me to pick out some of my all-time favourite fuzzes - which are legion actually - just far too many to include in a single rundown. So we settled on doing somewhat less well known favourite fuzzes - under the guise of ’Secret Weapon Fuzzes’. These are mostly somewhat under the radar classics - several of which are discontinued, but all of which deliver distinct superior tones.

Beyond these being Secret Weapon Fuzzes there was no other specific theme - so we get a variety of ...

This is probably the most anticipated of my 12 Degrees roundups - and is a touch more complex and different to the other 2 in the series. Within each category here there can be a huge difference in character and output - for instance with Fuzz Faces going from quite mild to rather searing Meathead and Regulus VIII levels of aggression. So the gradual step up in gain per category doesn’t apply here. And because of circuit variations and differences in components and construction, each and every ...

This post was suggested by a reader - a friend of the person whom I acquired the ProAnalog Devices MKIV Modern from near the tail-end of last year and via Reverb.com. Instead of covering just the ProAnalog pair though, I decided I should cover 4 matched sets of mine which have some underlying similarities in many ways. In each instance I had acquired just one of each of these pairs, but so liked that one pedal that I decided later to get the matching pair. The largest gap in pair completion was...

Last time I did a Tone Bender overview I limited the selection to 12, and as much by chance as anything else I still managed to get a pretty decent roundup of most of the main Tone Bender varieties although not quite all as featured here. In the world of fuzz though only the Big Muff can compete with the convoluted and complex nature of the Tone Bender Family Tree - which I will endeavour to distil first, and then extrapolate into my own favourite / preferred pedals!

It all starts with the ...

This particular post was triggered by a recent video I came across which compared the various Mini Klon/Klone style pedals (Not Nano!!!) doing the rounds at the moment. I see lots of posts about the Mini Mosky Golden Horse on Pedalboards of Doom these days - but there is only one proper Golden Horse - and that’s the Decibelics one - more of that later.

After viewing the Mini head-to-head comparisons I then flipped across to the Australian Super Fun guy’s Klon review from late 2017. In the ...

So you may have read last year that I went a little overboard with fuzz type pedals - aiming initially to build up an essential reference collection of 30 of the best - I then published my ’2018 Year of Fuzz Tone Quest’ just about half way through that year - featuring 40 pedals, and right now, my current fuzz quota is running at exactly 100 pedals - with 82 compacts, 11 minis and 7 medium to large pedals making up the collection.

This overview is 24 of the best ’...

The recent arrival of the V2 ProAnalog Devices Manticore was the catalyst for this series of articles. Where I select my own personal favourite pick for each of the key enclosure sizes. Anyone who has ever assembled a pedalboard or pedal-chain will know that you need to make some hard decisions along the way - based on exactly what you can fit in. Hence I give you options right along the scale from Mini, to Compact, Medium and Large.

Usually you get increased functionality and feature ...

This article was triggered by the recent That Pedal Show episode on Colorsound Power Boost-Style Pedals (AKA Colorsound Overdriver) - where Messrs Dan and Mick introduced us to a variety of largely vintage-style Silicon transistor overdrives. There was an original vintage Colorsound Power Boost - versions of which are still available at Macaris (Charing Cross Road), then there was the Tru-Fi Color Driver and Electronic Orange Bananaboost - all pretty much faithful reproductions of the original ...